


Doesn't paint in town

by afra_schatz



Series: Doesn't paint in town AU [3]
Category: The Lord of the Rings RPF
Genre: Art, Humor, M/M, Romance, Slice of Life, orlando is a language genius and a professional art muse of sorts, sean is as muddleheaded as he is a brilliant artist, travelling
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-04-14
Updated: 2017-04-14
Packaged: 2018-10-18 20:28:29
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 75,682
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10624563
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/afra_schatz/pseuds/afra_schatz
Summary: This is a collection of much all stories in the 'Doesn't paint in town' verse, in which Sean is a muddle-headed artist and Orlando is his muse, stretching from 1993 to 2028. The stories are listed not in a chronological order but in the order in which I posted them and in which they should be read :).





	1. Chapter 1

****

**2007**

On good days my car resembles a moody teenager and let’s just say that today is not a good day. No amount of kicking it changes anything, but I’ve run out of options – I’m neither a mechanic nor a magician. My darling wife told me to have the car checked out before leaving and as always my wife was right.

Sighing, I lean against the hood and try to appreciate the beautiful and untouched landscape instead of cursing my car for breaking down in the middle of nowhere, where not even my cell is working. I eat a sandwich, then grab a bottle of lukewarm water through the open window and take a few gulps before, in a little panic attack, I ask myself whether I should better ration the water supply. Could be a while until a tow truck comes along and it’s not like my wife will miss me for the next couple of days. 

At least it’s not raining. I tilt my head back and look into the clear blue sky, not a single cloud there to keep the sun company. Only when black dots start dancing in front of my eyes I avert my gaze, turning temporarily blind thanks to my own stupidity.

When my vision returns, I am no longer alone.

“Jesus Christ!” I curse and jolt, but not far since my car’s behind me.

A black dog stands on the deserted road and tilts its head to the side, dealing with the surprise of finding another being here with more dignity than I just did. It wears a red scarf as a collar and my heart rate calms down considerably when I realise that this means I probably won’t get eaten alive by a savage wild dog.

“Hello there,” I say, aiming for an unruffled tone of voice, and crouch down, bringing myself on eye level with the dog. “Where do you come from?”

As if to answer me the dog looks over its shoulder to the beginnings of a forest behind it and then looks back at me. It hesitates for a moment before tentatively taking a few steps towards me, sniffing my right knee when it’s within reach. 

Slowly I extend my hand and stroke its black fur, black eyes regarding me with curiosity.

“You’re not a fox,” someone states.

I look up in response to that and find myself eye to eye with a young man who appeared as quietly as his dog. 

“Uhm, no,” I say and rise when the dog returns to its master, “not the last time I checked.”

He has stopped on the same spot as the dog before, hands buried in the pockets of his faded jeans. He wears a loose white shirt and his naked arms are darkly tanned. Short curls frame a face with features almost disturbingly handsome and despite him being in his late twenties, I guess, it has something boyish to it.

He pats the dog with indulgence and explains, “It’s just that Sidi usually only disappears like that when he’s smelled a fox.” 

“It’s probably because it’s not that common for people to stop here, is it?” I enquire and he takes a short, assessing look at my car and probably at the frustration on my face.

“Your car broke down?”

“Died on me, yes.”

“At least it chose a nice spot for the funeral.”

The amusement in his voice makes me smile involuntarily and I scratch my head.

“Any chance I can borrow your cell to get someone to fix it?” I ask. “Seems the modern world has ganged up against me today, my phone isn’t working either.”

“Oh, they usually don’t out here,” he responds calmly, “You can make your call at my house, if you wanna.”

In the movies an offer like that on a deserted road is the classic opener for a hermit slash mass murderer horror plot. Unless we’re talking adult movies, then it would mean sweaty sex in a woodshed within the next five minutes. Uhm, gay sweaty sex, considering we’re both male.

“You alright?” asks the young man, again with that silver bell tinkle of amusement to his voice.

“I think I’ve been in the sun for too long,” I say.

“Let’s get you out of it then,” he decides and stretches out his hand, “I’m Orlando, by the way.”

His handshake is firm and his palm feels slightly calloused.

“Nice to meet you,” I reply, “I’m Sean.”

“Hello, Sean,” he says and his lips curve up again in an almost private smile when he speaks. “That’s a lovely name.”

“Uhm,” I say, a little confused, “thanks, I guess.”

He lets go of my hand and his dog – Sidi – barks once before running off back into the woods. Orlando shakes his head.

“He never gives up trying to make me walk back faster,” he says when I got my little backpack and we follow the dog, leaving my car behind on the roadside. “And he always gives me that mournful look when I find him waiting on the doorstep.”

“Oh, I know that one,” I reply while I try to keep up with him. His steps are sure and wide, he must walk this not-really-path quite frequently. “My wife looks at me that way when she sends me shopping and I come back with normal milk instead of fat reduced.”

“I hope she doesn’t mind that you compare her to a dog,” Orlando says and looks over his shoulder, amusement twinkling in his eyes. 

“Erm,” I stutter and say lamely, “she loves animals, so I think she wouldn’t mind.”

I’m pretty sure she would, though, and I’m not planning on calling her a bitch to her face any time soon, as nice as Orlando’s dog seems to be.

“So,” Orlando says conversationally, “you got pups, too? I mean kids?”

I don’t need more of an invitation to talk about my children while we make our way past ancient trees and rustling leaves. Sidi comes back to us a few times and encircles us like a shepherd dog would do with its flock of sheep. Eventually, we reach the end of the woods, welcomed by a barking Sidi who jumps around us like a puppy. There is a solitary wooden house standing close to the beach, painted blue a long time ago.

“Wow,” I say and stop when I can both smell and see salt water, “I didn’t realise the ocean was that close.”

“Well,” Orlando replies, scratching his dog behind its ear. Sidi’s tongue is hanging out and for a moment he enjoys his master’s attention, then he runs off again. Orlando laughs because indeed, he runs up to the house in front of us, takes the few stairs to the porch without slowing down and while his claws click on the wood he looks over his shoulder, expecting us to follow and pronto.

“You do know that dog well,” I comment.

“Got him when he was that wee,” Orlando says and indicates the size of a handful before he gestures me to follow him to the house. “He’s always been a drama queen, too. Just look at those sad eyes. Though he knows perfectly well that his bowl’s full and the doors gonna open –“

And exactly then the wooden door at which Sidi’s been scratching does indeed swing open.

“- right about now.” Orlando finishes with a chuckle and his trainers don’t make a sound on the stairs.

Sidi scrambles into the house when the gap is barely wide enough to let him through. Ridiculously, my heart beats a little faster and for a moment I can’t help but think of my horror movie scenario again. 

But there’s no one waiting with a chainsaw for us. 

Instead of a deadly instrument to cause mayhem the man leaning in the doorframe holds a coffee mug in his right hand. He has raised it to his mouth, blowing away the steam, and eyes us over the rim. Though he looks a good deal older than Orlando, fifty maybe, his clothes are as casual as the younger man’s. There are stains of colourful paint here and there on them, their surface cracked and uneven as if they have been resisting the efforts of a washing machine for quite a long time. There’s a smear of red – and by now I have my horror fantasies enough in check to be sure it is indeed just red paint, thank you – clinging to a strand of shaggy blond hair and one on his left cheek, too, stopping short over reddish blond stubble.

“You left the coffee machine on,” the man comments with a distinct British lilt and his voice is rough from sleep or maybe it is like that the whole day. 

“And the smell enticed you away from the canvas?” Orlando asks back though it is not really a question. “My brilliant evil scheme worked then. – Look, I brought a guest.”

I raise my hand and wave, try a smile and hurry to say, “My car broke down and uhm, I need to call someone.”

“His name,” Orlando says, “is Sean. Isn’t that a nice name?”

Christ, I wish I had just locked myself into my car and waited for a tow car. This is weird. 

The blond guy exchanges a glance with Orlando, then he shakes his head when the younger man giggles and finally says to me,

“Just ignore Orlando, he’s an idiot.”

“Oi,” Orlando objects with a grin, “I’m standing right here!”

Following his own advice and ignoring the younger man the blond extends a paint splattered hand in my direction.

“Nice to meet you. I’m Sean.”

Shaking the offered hand I must’ve blinked in confusion because the blond – Sean – adds,

“Sean Bean. – And only dolts find that funny, Lan.”

“Oh,” Orlando replies, highly amused despite or maybe because of the older man’s dry tone of voice, “it’s just that you go on and on about how special and unique you are and who comes along? Another Sean.”

Sean rolls his eyes but the right corner of his mouth twitches. When Orlando brushes past him and pats his shoulder he seems to lean into the touch for the briefest of moments. I want to look away because it feels private. And how odd is it that a pat on the shoulder can make you feel like you were spying on someone?

My gaze has dropped to the worn floor boards when two voices say, “Come on in then,” at the same time. Orlando is nowhere to be seen but Sean grins at me and adds, 

“Phone’s down the hall, mate. Try Bettany’s garage.”

A few minutes later I glare at the cordless phone in annoyance before I put it back onto the small table with a little too much force. 

Damn. 

I find the two men in a homey kitchen at the other end of the hall. Orlando is eating cereal from a bowl at an old table whose chairs don’t match and Sean stands at the sink and rinses off brushes of different sizes. He wipes one of them dry on the front of his shirt and then stacks it into the back pocket of his jeans.

“You look like you could use a cuppa tea,” Sean says, looking at me.

“It’s coffee here,” Orlando says with a full mouth, “how often do I have to tell you we’re not in Buckingham Palace?”

“Says the bloke who exists on chip butty,” retorts Sean and indeed begins to fix me a cup of tea, “and besides, putting the kettle on is like –“

“Getting in touch with your inner Queen?” Orlando supplies sweetly.

“Almost as satisfying as knocking you over the head with it,” finishes Sean in his version of the sweet tone. 

“So, Sean,” Orlando says abruptly to me, ignoring the other Sean’s threat, “what’s with the long face? Have a seat.” 

He kicks back a chair with his foot in invitation and I slump down on it, weight of the world on my shoulders despite their joking around.

“I phoned the garage and they promised to send someone,” I say but add gravely, “tomorrow morning. How’s that for service, I asked, but they said there was no way anyone could come today.”

I shake my head in misery and Orlando says around a mouthful of cereal, “You wouldn’t want Paul to come here when he’s not in the mood, trust me. He’d probably turn your car into that pink helicopter from ‘Riptide’.”

I laugh politely but humourlessly and shake my head again for good measures.

“I should probably call someone else. If they find this Godforsaken place. Maybe I should just hire a car. Or get someone to pick me up. It’s a couple of hours drive, sure, but –“

“Do you need to be somewhere?” Orlando interrupts my rambling and I look up from my clenched fists to find him licking his spoon.

I shake my head.

“I have a business meeting in the Seaside Inn tomorrow,” I say. “I wanted to be a day early, to catch up with some paperwork, you know. God knows why they chose this –“

“You can crash here in the guest room,” Orlando interrupts me again, lays down his spoon and props up his feet onto one of the remaining chairs while Sean puts his empty bowl into the sink. “Paul’s gonna fix your car in the morning and you’ll be right on time for your thing. No biggie.”

His tone of voice is casual but his eyes are sincere and I turn my head to look at Sean and wait for what he has to say to Orlando’s impromptu invitation. Sean places a mug of tea in front of me, smiles absentmindedly and leaves the room without a word.

“That means he agrees,” Orlando translates, pleased with himself, my staying already decided, and his brown eyes regard me with curiosity. “What kind of business meeting is held in the Seaside Inn?”

“I wish I could say it was about surf gear,” I say, “but it’s oysters.”

“You’re shitting me,” laughs Orlando and he really doesn’t believe me but doesn’t seem to mind either.

“No, it really is,” I confirm and find myself telling him all about my little business of speciality catering. I am a pretty good salesman, you know, I can get really excited over things like crème brule and canapés. And even though my day so far was kinda crappy and I’m not here to sell blueberry tarts or anything else for that matter, Orlando listens intently and even Sidi comes up and regards me with interest in his huge wet eyes.

“I’m sorry,” I say after a while and put my mug down, “sometimes I go on and on. I don’t want to bore you.”

Orlando chuckles and steals a sugar cube from a little porcelain cup on the table. 

“You’re not boring me and you know that exactly,” he says, “so stop trying to sell yourself short. It doesn’t suit you, man.”

I blink at him and can’t decide whether I should find so much honesty impolite or charming.

“Alright,” I reply after a moment and fold my hands on the table, “anyway, enough of me, tell me about you. So, what do you do?”

Orlando shrugs.

“Walk the dog. Make the coffee. Supply words of wisdom.”

“And if I ask what your real job is,” I comment, “you’ll probably punch me?”

Orlando’s brows furrow comically. 

“Punch you?” he repeats.

“Well,” I say, “Christine – that’s my wife – did that with a bank manager once when he asked her whether she had a job or was quote just a housewife unquote.”

Orlando laughs out loud, a strange mixture of a cackle and a giggle, and gets up from his chair. I follow his example.

“I think I fell in love with your wife just a little bit right now,” he says and gives me another of those full body waves to follow him instead of answering my question.

We walk into what must be the living room and Sidi trots past us and hops onto the sofa, curling up there. It’s that sort of living room where a dog on the couch really isn’t odd. I catch myself contemplating whether it’s part of Orlando’s job description to vacuum clean the sofa regularly. The place looks tidy enough, if you ignore the half squished tubes of paint scattered everywhere, and just like in the kitchen the furniture seems to be picked out for its not-matching qualities. There are several easels standing in the room, their backs to us, and it smells of acrylic paint, cinnamon cookies and salt water. It’s very spacious and open and through the huge windows I can see the shore and the ocean as if we were in some ad for vacation places. Have you ever smelled a freshly baked muffin and just then realised how famished you were? It’s like that and my eyes are glued to the blue and I step through the veranda door out into the mid afternoon sun. 

“As for jobs,” Orlando says, interrupting my awe and stating the obvious, “Sean’s a painter.” 

Said painter crouches not very far from us, pottering about tending to some rose bushes. He looks over his shoulder, up at us, and adds to Orlando’s explanation, “And someone has to make sure I eat from time to time and change my underwear regularly.”

“How come then,” Orlando says, “that you hardly ever wear any?”

Orlando smiles cheekily and Sean’s green eyes twinkle in something more than amusement. I look back and forth between the two of them, realise what that means and can’t help blushing. It’s not the gay bit that does that, I assure you. I’m totally cool with the whole man-on-man thing, or as cool as a heterosexual guy can be, I guess. It’s more that the age difference – stressed by Orlando’s boyish casualness and Sean’s weatherworn features – makes it surprising and I can’t help asking myself when and how they met and why they clicked. 

“Uhm,” I say because really, I don’t know what else to say.

“Just ignore Orlando,” Sean says for the second time, seeing me shuffling my feet, “he’s an idiot.”

Orlando doesn’t say anything to that but just slaps the back of Sean’s head lightly.

“I certainly see why someone living here becomes a painter,” I say, partly to steer the conversation into safer waters again, partly because the waters – not the metaphorical ones but the ones right in front of us – do make a lot of sense. 

Sean’s eyes flick to Orlando as if out of habit and only then they follow my gaze and he replies,

“Oh, you mean the ocean? Yeah, lovely view, that.”

“Nice waves, too, today.” Orlando adds and looks at me with an arched eyebrow and a suggestion in his eyes. “I have a spare surfboard, you know.”

I haven’t surfed in ages but I nod to the unspoken proposal, as if it’s impossible to say no to anything Orlando suggests. So, I find myself riding a wave a short time later, and a much shorter time after that I’m close to drowning in the ocean. Repeatedly. I swallow about half a gallon of salt water and hit my head with Orlando’s spare board twice. 

But it’s amazing.

In the late afternoon, I sit in an armchair in the living room, right next to the open veranda door, my hair is still damp from a shower and I read my book. Well, it’s not really my book but one of Christine’s and I’m not really reading it either. Every once in a while I scan a paragraph and then let my mind digest it slowly and idly, like you do it with a single piece of chocolate. And my eyes are cast down and I’m not watching Orlando and Sean. Seriously, ‘cause that would be impolite.

Orlando takes up all the space on a three seat sofa because he has dragged his long legs up onto the upholstery, trainers and all. And he’s not even pretending to do something else but staring at Sean, even though Sean’s not doing anything particularly watch-worthy. 

He has moved one of the smaller easels out of a corner and has taken a while to choose a canvas, settling for one about five feet square. Then he’s applied some liquids that smell like mechanic-has-love-affair-with-cleaning-lady with a sponge and the laziness of someone preparing dinner even though he’s not hungry yet. Right now, he’s painting the entire thing in one single colour, up and down, as if he wasn’t painting a canvas but a wall.

It’s absolutely still in the room, there’s no fire crackling in the fireplace and Sidi has stopped snoring. Quietness except for the distant rolling of the waves and the smooth rish-rashing of Sean’s brush on the canvas. Sean’s done with the up and down and has proceeded to left and right – same colour, same brush – and his eyes keep drifting to Orlando every once in a while. 

I don’t know much about painting but I guess all this is just preparation or – if you excuse the sexual metaphor – foreplay. And yet, it’s like something has changed about Sean, there is a sort of magnetism to him now that forces you to pay attention to him. His presence is dominating the room in a way that top managers do it on a conference and with them I have always put it down to the expensive suits and big cigars and the perfect haircut. Sean’s half long blond hair seems strangely fine and soft in addition to its uncombed status, he still hasn’t bothered to shave either, and the blue sweater he’s put on is worn thin at the elbows, frayed like his jeans. His face – strong chin, jaw and nose, features carved out roughly, lines of age showing already around his mouth and his eyes – his face bears the concentration of a little boy. An expression oddly innocent and sweet really, and at the same time almost disturbing.

I catch myself wondering what he sees when he looks into the mirror in the morning. Have you ever looked at yourself in the middle of shaving and thought, ‘Huh, who is that guy?’, like in the grocery store you never really look at the person behind the cash register until one day you do? I scan the next paragraph of my book and ask myself whether Sean knows about this presence of his or whether in the morning he’s too busy rubbing sleep out of his eyes and spitting toothpaste foam into the sink.

Orlando certainly is aware of it and I would say that it is like a moth drawn to the light, only it isn’t. Again, from the corner of my eyes I see Sean looking at Orlando, not to check whether he’s still there, still watching, but as if Sean was the moth and Orlando the light. 

The strange thing is that Orlando isn’t beautiful in the perfection kind of way. His nose is slightly crooked, his eyes are too almond shaped for the straight lines above and under them and his lips are rather thin and right now he kinda smiles like Mona Lisa. Also, I've known him less than a day and have already witnessed him walking into a door and stumbling over his bare feet on the beach. And honestly, he laughs like a thirteen year old girl and eats like a construction worker. 

Sean looks at him again and for a moment he seems to be frozen in time, his brush half raised and his thumb scratching his nose. I can barely keep myself from jumping up and running to see what he’s painting when he begins to stub a brush into fresh colours. Earlier this afternoon, even when the waves crashed rather impolitely over my head, I was sure I knew what Sean was painting – the ocean of course, in its million shades of blue. Now I’m suddenly sure that it’s portraits of Orlando and always Orlando. 

“What are you reading?” 

I jolt but not because Orlando’s voice is particularly loud, on the contrary. But maybe because I feel like I am caught red handed. 

I look at the book cover.

“I think it’s the autobiography of a female star cook,” I reply and get a giggle from Orlando and a chuckle from behind the easel as a response. “My wife packed it for me, heaven knows why.”

“Well, if it turns out too boring,” Orlando says, “you can borrow Sean’s sports paper from last month that's lying on the staircase.”

“Thanks,” I reply dryly and realise that I really haven’t shown them any gratitude up until now. 

“Thanks for taking me in by the way,” I say.

“No problem,” Orlando waves it aside, “Couldn’t have left you there, kicking your car, could I?”

“You could have just called me a taxi,” I reply and put my book into my lap.

“I figured you’d be the surfing type,” Orlando says, “Purely selfish reasons for bringing you here, see?”

It occurs to me that Orlando is a pretty good surfer, has to do it regularly. And on his own. I don’t think I’ve ever been to the beach without my friends back in the day. And now, too, Christine and I live a pretty tightly scheduled social life, so to speak, and we’re both enjoying it. I mean, this place is nice in a holiday sort of way but I can’t help wondering how long one can stand being here, how long someone as lively as Orlando can be here before – 

“Does it get lonely?” 

The question is out before I think about it and I smile apologetically.

“What?” Orlando asks, interested but not understanding immediately.

“I was just wondering,” I rush to explain, “I mean, it’s none of my business but you’re here completely out on your own, aren’t you?”

Orlando shifts and comes to lie on his belly, his head turned to face me.

“You know,” he says after a moment, explanations given as freely and generously as his smiles, “we spend some weeks in town from time to time. I go out and dance and don’t sleep for three nights in a row and Sean drinks ridiculous amounts of beer in crappy make belief British pubs.” He smiles at the memory. “Recharging batteries.”

“Why don’t you do it the other way round? Why don’t you live in town and just come out here from time to time?”

Orlando looks at me as if I’ve asked him to emigrate to Mars. His brows are knitted together and it takes him a moment to realise that I was asking seriously. Then his face lights up again in that Mona Lisa smile of his.

“Sean can’t –,” he stops and starts again. “When we’re in town, Sean doesn’t paint. And here, I have him all to myself.”

My eyes flick to the easel at the other end of the room because it feels like the thing to which Sean might have to respond to. But the other man doesn’t. Maybe ‘cause there is nothing else to say and the beauty of personal pronouns is they work both ways. Orlando notices the movement of my eyes and my frown but he obviously doesn’t need Sean to add something.

“But don’t get me wrong, it’s nice to have you as a guest,” he assures me then and with a glance at the book in my lap adds, “Any chance you feel like cooking by the way?”

So, Orlando and I leave Sean to his paint and brushes and the young man sits on the kitchen table, watches me and we talk about England, where they are both from. I create as much of a three course dinner as one can with random supplies out of their fridge. When I’m done the smell is enticing enough to lure Sean away from his painting as well, something that seems to surprise Orlando rather a lot. Sean comments on that by saying that it’s not burned toast for a change and earns himself a kick in the shin and a brilliantly innocent smile from Orlando, opposite the table. We have some wine and the conversation revolves around Yorkshire pudding, sand castles, Orlando’s 30th birthday and Acrimboldi before Sean returns to the living room. Orlando’s eyes keep drifting to the connecting door and so I proclaim to be turning in early, retiring to the guest room to leave them to themselves.

I wake up because I need to pee. Wine does that to me, go figure. Sighing, I push myself up and out of bed and take careful steps towards the door, so I won’t knock into anything. I scratch my head once I’m in the hall, trying to get my sleepy brain to remember where the bathroom is. I end up in the kitchen and I’m about to turn around on my heels when I see that the door to the adjoining living room is slightly ajar. 

On the other end of the room the unpainted white canvases seem to reflect the very first light of dawn and the easels cast shadows of slightly darker patches on the wooden floor. They all stand with their back to me and I realise I haven’t seen even one of Sean’s paintings. There are none decorating any of the walls in the house, you see, at least not the ones I have seen. I worry my lower lip and rub my thumb in my palm, my fingers itching to push the door open a little further so I can sneak through and have a look. 

What stops me is not the knowledge that one shouldn’t spy on one’s hosts. It’s movement. 

Through the second door, the one from the hall, a lean figure in pj’s comes in and almost bumps into one of the comfy chairs – Orlando. He halts in front of the ever open veranda door and rubs his eyes with his left hand, scratches his bum with his right. When he yawns, there’s movement again, out on the veranda this time, and Sean turns his head. A tiny red glimmer next to his right hand shows that he’s been smoking. But the way his body seems to have tightened up against the cold tells that he's been standing there longer than an average cigarette length.

“Effing freezing,” Orlando murmurs and steps through the open door. 

Sean doesn’t reply and while I wonder what he’s doing out there at this ungodly hour, Orlando obviously knows and doesn’t need to ask. Instead he reaches out with an outstretched finger and lightly pokes Sean’s naked arm. 

“You’re goosebumpy,” he observes. 

The poking becomes an idle caress of a fingertip gliding over cold skin and tiny blond hairs, standing up.

“I keep telling you that’s not a word,” says Sean with the same low voice that is not really a whisper. His whole body seems to lean into the small contact of his and Orlando’s skin.

“And I keep telling you that it so is, if I decide so,” contradicts Orlando. 

He steps behind Sean and wraps his arms around the older man’s slender form, trapping Sean’s left arm. Sean flicks the cigarette away, his fingertips sneak under the rim of the sleeve of Orlando’s pajama shirt and he relaxes into the embrace. 

“Cause you’re the king of the universe?” asks Sean. 

“Cause I am the king of the universe,” confirms Orlando and lets his chin rest on Sean’s shoulder. “Damn straight.”

In the dim light of a slumbering morning they stand perfectly still, sharing body heat and an affection that makes my heart sigh. I wish I could be with Christine just now so she would make the quiet aching in my chest go away by hugging me or tickling my feet or I don’t know. The way they melt into each other and hold and are held alike, seems more intimate than any kiss or even sex. And Jesus, it’s so utterly private that I’m actually ashamed of myself to be standing behind that door and not being able to look away.

Well, for a long moment anyway, until my bladder reminds me of an even more pressing matter than decency and respect of privacy. After taking care of that I all but tiptoe back to my room. It’s quite a while later and I’m again under the thick blankets for a bit more sleep, that I hear two pairs of feet on the wooden staircase and Orlando’s suppressed giggle.

When I step into the kitchen again a few hours later, dressed and ready to leave, there is no sign of Orlando downstairs. Sean is up again, though, and after a precious cup of coffee he offers to walk me back to my car. While with Orlando I found myself deep in conversation within five seconds, Sean barely speaks a word when we wander through the woods. Sean seems to have left the magnetism from yesterday, the almost uber human presence, back at the blue house by the sea, - right now he’s just an ordinary guy walking a black dog in the middle of nowhere. 

But still it’s the silent walk through the woods that makes me grasp Orlando’s meaning when he dismissed moving to town. Maybe it’s just the early morning – I find myself not in the mood for enthusiastic communication either – but maybe it’s because Sean doesn’t need to speak to hear his own thoughts, see them in bright colours all the time. It’s good to breathe the fresh air and to have thoughts that are bright and clear and undisturbed by city life or random people. 

The mechanic, a white blond guy with piercing blue eyes, is already waiting there and he brought magical hands – my car is purring like a big fat cat in no time. Through its open window I thank Sean again for taking me in. He just shrugs and lightly pats the roof of my car with a flat hand.

***

It’s a few months later and Christine and I are having a lazy Saturday morning breakfast. We share the paper, and exchange the interesting news over a cup of strong coffee.

“They’re working on Main Street again,” I say, chewing on my toast, “electricity cables this time.”

“Uh huh,” says Christine, not really listening. 

“What was the name of that guy again?” she asks all of a sudden. “You know the one with whom you stayed before the oyster thing? He was a painter, right? Was it Sean Bean?”

I raise my eyes from the stock market headlines to look at her but she’s still reading.

“That’s him,” I reply and frown. “Why? Something happened? You’re not reading the death ads again, are you?”

She looks at me as if she would never do such a thing as reading obituary notices of strangers (she does, though).

”No, dummy. He didn’t die. The town hall gallery is holding an exhibition of some of his works. Highly praised.”

“Really?” I say and pour myself fresh coffee. 

She looks at me with that knowing look of hers and suggests with a smile, “Say, why don’t we go and have a look? I’m curious.”

“Well, if you wanna go,” I reply, and she laughs at my sorry attempt at acting casual.

Parking is a bitch in front of town hall but somehow, miraculously, we do find a parking spot eventually. Quite a lot of people have found their way here and wander through the well lit rooms of the gallery, stopping here and there to chat. Christine spots the owner of the gallery, a woman in a red dress, waves at her and leaves me with a kiss on the cheek ‘just for a sec’.

Aimlessly I wander through the first room – showing works of an (obviously insane) Mexican Sculptor – until I reach the first painting by Sean. I stop dead in front of it and can’t move. The canvas is huge, towering over me and it’s like it has gripped me and holds me captive, shaking me and making my heart beat faster.

It’s Orlando. It’s like he’s here with me, so strong is his charisma on the painting. I can see, no, I can feel his eyes on me, feel his laughter as if it was inside me. There is a sort of benevolence to his presence that makes me feel looked after and challenged at the same time, makes me want to reach out and feel how it feels when someone, when Sean drops the brush and touches him.

It takes me a while to tear my eyes away and walk with ridiculously weak knees to the next exhibit. Again, Orlando’s energy is captured on the large canvas, only that it’s never trapped but vibrating and free. I feel what Sean must’ve felt, painting this, I can see what he sees in him, what he means to him, and Jesus Christ, I can’t believe I ever thought Orlando anything but perfect after seeing this.

The third painting is the two of them, in a dance and a battle of minds and bodies, of spirits, wrapping around one another, consuming each other and creating each other anew. It’s dominance and submission, concentration and relaxation, independence and complete trust. It makes me feel small and insignificant and in awe at the same time. 

The forth is Orlando with Sean again and I can barely look at it. Fleetingly I wonder whether kids are allowed in this gallery because this is obscene, only it isn’t. I cast my eyes down and feel myself flushing but can’t help looking up again from under lowered eyelashes, affected by something this painting has awoken in me. I can see Orlando on his knees next to the easel, I can see Sean’s hands on his sweating body, everywhere, all night. I can see penetration and consumption, them seeping into one another, more than just semen and sweat and saliva. I can see Orlando’s mouth open in a cry of need and fulfillment, hear Sean’s own turning hoarse in my ears eventually. Two souls laid bare completely, nothing is left hidden and it’s like looking into the sun even if you know it’s going to blind you eventually.

“Wow.”

For a moment I’m not sure whether I said this or someone else, but then Christine hooks her arm through mine and leans against me.

“Yeah,” I agree and can feel her heart beating faster, just like mine did.

“Ah, I see you’ve found the Beans.”

Reluctantly, I turn my head to see who is talking now. It’s the owner of the gallery, her hair in an artistic tower on her head and her eyes on us.

“This is –“ Christine begins but doesn’t find words.

”It is, isn’t it?” The woman agrees but there’s no blush on her cheeks over the beautiful crudeness, no sparkle in her eyes over the uncompromising devotion. “One of his best works, if I might say so, though most of them are this,” she stops as if searching for a word as well, only with her it’s show, “vivid.”

“It’s like –“ Christine starts again, her eyes still glued to the painting, and she almost reaches out to touch it.

“It’s fascinating,” the gallery owner says after a moment and I detect a sort of wonderment in her voice after all, “that even his latest works still appear as innovative and original as the first of his paintings that he did fourteen years ago.”

Fourteen years? I smile and do the math, unnoticed by my wife and the gallery owner. Both of them look at me when I chuckle quietly, but only in Christine’s eyes I see realisation twinkling. To her I don’t have to explain. I look at the painting again and am sure that it was a 16 year old Brit, tripping over his feet, that provided the proverbial kiss of the muse and definitely much more than that for a decade and a half now.

The gallery woman steps a little closer to the painting and to us and smiles with bemusement at my unexplained outburst before she talks again. Her voice bears both a hint of college professor and of saleswoman when she says, 

“Those deep red spirals up left are clearly an homage to Franz Marc. The band of green connects them to the onyx depths and it’s an unorthodox but quite brilliant device to add sparkles of gold in the manner of Russian icons which –“

I stop listening when her first words of academic analysis sink in. 

All of the paintings are abstract art. 

I hadn’t even realised it.

****

**1993**

I have a friend who injured his back in a motorcycle accident. Can’t move anything waist down. He’s one of those positive thinking blokes though, after a few months he started making jokes about us hiding the beer in the upper regions of the fridge where he couldn’t reach it because of his wheelchair.

Just once, after we got royally plastered during a footie game on telly, he told me when it is bad. First thing in the morning and sometimes during the day when, just for a second, he simply forgets. When he is about to get up to take a piss or something equally mundane and his legs just won’t move. No telling them, no cursing and no begging helps. 

Doesn’t count how much you want something if you just can’t do it.

I am a painter. Canvases not walls, though lately there isn’t much difference. I do some commissions to pay the rent but it is going through the motions, all technique and no inspiration, no heart whatsoever. Most of the times I just sit around and stare at my hands. The only colour on them is not acrylic paint or oil, but yellowish stain, evidence of too much smoking. I look at my hands and yeah, I can wriggle my fingers, flick my wrists but all the same I feel paralysed, cut off from the important nerve that was my creativity.

No need to tell me how pathetic that is. I know that. No behaviour for a 34 year old.

As it is, I am doing a shit job at pulling myself together, judging from the worried glances I receive from my mates and my baby brother in particular. He is he one who’s packed my bags and sent me off on a holiday in France. To clear my head and do something against my grey skin, he said. To get rid of me at least temporarily, I silently added like some petulant child, but took my stuff and ended up in some little village in the south. Hardly anyone here speaks English but I reckon that is just as well, lowers the chances of me whining to some poor stranger about my creative crisis.

I still can’t bear looking at my hands, though. Now, I spend hours and hours of the days staring at the ocean, at vintages in the mountains, at kids playing with street mutts, at sunsets and sundowns. 

And feel absolutely nothing. No joy, no excitement, not even anger. Nothing.

***

A friend of my mum is into that spiritual stuff and he once said that I have an old soul. Not that I believe in any of that new age shit, especially not when the bloke in the liquor store doesn’t give a flying fuck about old souls.

I am not gonna say hat my life sucks just because of that of course. Would be kind of lame, even for a sixteen year old, and even though people my age have a tendency to behave like moping crybabies. 

If I had had a say in it, though, I would maybe have emigrated and become a crocodile farmer in Australia. That would’ve been cool, despite the most plausible fact that one of my darlings would have bitten one of my hands off by now. Or maybe, I would have become a smuggler of candy bars, supplying those poor kids in American de-fat camps or whatever they call them.

Anyways, as it is, my life hasn’t been so much of a pain in the arse, it has just been a plain bore for the last sixteen years. Like when you accidentally leave the VCR on record on a weekday morning. You end up with kilometres of stuff you might as well tape over right away.

It’s alright though because it’s over now anyway. Not that anyone really knows about this so far because I haven’t finished school yet and am supposed to go to uni right after. But tell you what, I’m not going to. First day of summer break I packed my bags and hitchhiked through France until I found a place in the south with nice waves for surfing and a little fish restaurant to work in. Learning French can’t be that difficult, I told myself and of course I was right.

‚Learn for life’, that’s what they tell us in school over and over. But I reckon it is about time that I stop with the preparations and start living for real. 

You don’t learn how to skydive from reading Superman comics either, do you? No, you don’t.

***

It is early afternoon and Sean’s feet have carried him to a little café, the same one he has come to over the last week. Habits form themselves quickly when there is nothing else to do. He has ordered a cup of tea and both he and the young waitress have smiled at how long it still takes them to understand one another. The British newspaper he has bought on the way lies unread and headline down on the small round table, the sugar pot put on top to keep it from flying away. Sean’s hair is a little too long, he keeps blond strands tugged behind his ear, his clothes are picked out with the carelessness of an artist or the choicelessness of a dropout.

Seagulls cry and disappear behind the roofs of little white houses where the harbour and the fish market are. Ugly but friendly mutts lie at the feet of their little human companions and sleepily watch lean and shabby streetcats pass by. They stroll over the square place in front of the cafe and lie down in a sunny corner to lick their private parts because what else is there to do.

On the few steps that lead to a statue of some local hero slouches a group of surfer boys in their late teens, licking ice cream from cones. They cuff one another with sticky fingers against darkly tanned naked shoulders and don’t seem to mind the heat.

Orlando tells a story, changing flawlessly between English, French and international explanatory gesturing, and the other boys listen to him with open mouths or raised eyebrows. They collectively burst into laughter when Orlando throws both arms in the air, finishing his joke with an exuberant gesture, and he joins them with a grin. He rubs his hands through the curls of his mohawk, the heat has dried them already. 

Like sea stars the boys can’t go long without water and leave their spot in the sun to the cats once more, their surf boards under their arms, their giggles echoing from the walls. Walking Orlando is asked to retell part of his story and he does so happily. Near the end, just when they have reached the café, Orlando automatically repeats the gesture, too. His board knocks hard against Sean’s small round table.

***

Your teacup slithers towards the edge of the table before either of us can move. The fragile china shatters on the cobble stone and I flinch, try to get my board out of the way and nearly knock you out with it.

“Careful, careful,” you say and hold out your hands as if to protect your body. My mates snicker – not to self: kill them later – but you smile at me. That makes me blush even deeper than the latest demonstration of my clumsiness did and isn’t that odd? Not, it’s not and you wouldn’t look at me all confused now if you knew how lovely that little smile of yours is.

”You alright?” You ask when I don’t answer but simply stare at you. You search for the right words in French, “Es’que tu –“

“Sorry,” I blurt out, belatedly, “I uhm, I broke your cup.” Smooth, Orlando.

One of my mates makes a joke in French that I only half understand but I still hit him ‘accidentally’ with my board. Laughing they walk on, indicating me to follow later.

I turn around and find you crouched down on your knees, picking up the sharp pieces. I lean my board against the table and kneel down next to you, the rough stone scraping against my knees.

“I’m so sorry,” I repeat, “I’ll pay for it of course – I’m Orlando by the way.”

You grunt quietly, the audible equivalent to a forgiving shrug and I want to take that little sound, stuff it in my pocket and run away with it. How silly is that?

“Sean,” you introduce yourself and hold the shattered little bits of cup carefully in the palm of your left hand. “It’s just a mug, no harm done.”

Together we pick up the fragments and place them on your sports paper. You wipe your hands on your track pants and look at them for a long moment. Are you checking for cuts? I hope there are none, would be a shame because you have the most amazing hands. They look like they could cradle a kitten and make the little beast purr within seconds. They look like they could knock someone out cold with one blow, too. Elegant and powerful, gentle and in charge.

“Uhm,” you say with something that sounds warmer than amusement. I realize that I have grabbed your hands, searching them for injuries.

‘Just checking for cuts,’ I mean to say. What I do in fact say is, “You got great hands.” Fuck can I sound any more like a psychopath?

You look at me strangely for a long moment and I hold your gaze, determined to stare away the unexplained tiredness.

“Sorry,” I say for what must be the nth time today, and feel like a complete idiot. Once again you just smile at me and respond, “Don’t be.”

I’m still holding your hands. Thing is, I don’t think I can let them go again.

***

You tell me four different versions of your life – past, present and future – within the first hour in that café. You’re a restaurant tester, a salesman, a millionaire and a surfing pro. Only in the middle of story three I realize that you’ve included me in each one of them, turning me into a chef, a pilot, a banker and a surfer guru with false teeth. 

When I ask you about that you shrug, slouch a little deeper into the chair opposite of mine and say, “I have truckloads of lives in my head waiting for someone to live them. I thought I could give you some in exchange for that cup and the Orangina.”

I smile and ask, “And I could do with a new life or two?”

You just look at me and there’s an understanding in your eyes that should be impossible for someone your age, for anyone really. It lasts a second or two, then your face changes and you get up, 16 and skinny and jumpy again. I exhale and feel as if I had been holding my breath for a very long time.

“Come on,” you say and pick up your surfboard, “I’ll show you where surfer-guru-you is going to have his hut on the beach.”

You grab my hand again and drag me along, flashing me a reassuring smile that I didn’t need but gladly accept nevertheless. You know all the secret places of the village but your accent clearly says Southern England not France. I don’t ask because you’ll tell me the real version of your life eventually, I know that.

It is evening when you have to leave to change clothes for work and the light is not the best and all the shops are closed by now. It doesn’t matter that the light bulbs in my hotel room give off only dim light and that the only supplies I can get are the watercolours from my landlady’s little daughter. I promise to buy her new ones come tomorrow and start to paint.

I stop when I run out of colours and I don’t have to look at the pictures to be content with them. Instead I look at my hands and their backs are graced with smudges of yellow and blue, the right holds a chewed on kids brush.

Being paralysed means one can’t move, one doesn't respond to any impulse. The grip of your fingers is strong and sure out of instinct when you take me by the hand. I can still feel it.

****

**2016**

People have called me lazy, a drifter, and they're both right and wrong, just like strangers usually are when they judge you. It's easy to identify some abstract characteristic in a person you've just met, isn't it, just like switching into a soap and just knowing who's the naive, who the beast and so on.

I am as lazy as they come. I know people say that you need a job, a profession, something to give your life meaning, to make you feel useful. And I know that it sounds hackneyed and clichéd when I say that loving Sean is all the purpose I need in life, but there you are. Loving him is all I do the entire day besides doing the laundry and eating cookies and in all that is quite enough purpose, thanks.

And I guess when people call me a drifter, they're right too. I am the world's biggest procrastinator and never get anything done. I never took any job seriously, not more than it required to keep it to make money when we needed it. Hell, I didn't even finish school and believe me when I say that dusty old books still don't hold any appeal to me (seriously, did you ever believe those movies where uneducated people totally out of the blue discover the love for Jane Austen or Shakespeare? Honestly.). But it's just occupations, locations, life styles. I don't care about any of that. I merely drift to whereever Sean is, so there is a destination and it's always him.

Nothing else matters. Just him. Even after twenty three years I still spend days just sitting somewhere close, watching him, feeling his presence and feel aroused, sated, excited, content. I don't care how dependent that sounds, how one-track-minded, how fixated. It's true nevertheless.

And yeah, I still fall asleep on him sometimes when he's painting and humming some stupid footie song for half an eternity. Usually I wake up with at least one of my toes painted some screaming acrylic colour and Sean's smile too close to my face for me to focus on properly. He kisses my nose and says I'm the most annoying snorer on the planet and whether I could get him some fresh solvent. I tell him to fuck off, no, stay because really, he might be the most amazing painter and a genius, but his real purpose in life is being my human blanket.

 

****

**1994**

“Is there an icicle hanging from my nose?”

Sean stands in the door and is so baffled that he really does checks the tip of Orlando’s nose dutifully and then shakes his head and says, “No.”

“No?” Orlando repeats and then rubs his face with his mittened hand. “It feels bloody like it, though. Prolly a good thing that I don’t have a runny nose yet.” Saying that, he snuffles and looks at Sean. “What?”

“Uhm,” Sean says, bemused, and the large brush in his right hand points at Orlando questioningly. “Uhm.”

“I’m frozen solid. You’d think they have heating even in Czech trains, wouldn’t you? But they don’t, I tell you. - You’re gonna invite me in?” Orlando asks after his mini ramble. And even though both of them know that it’s not really a question he actually waits until Sean nods dumbly and takes a few steps back into the hallway of the flat and gestures Orlando to come in. 

Sean stares at the woollen hat with earflaps that Orlando presses into his free hand and somehow with that finds speech back, enough at least to say, “What -? How -?”

That’s a good question actually and Sean would really like to know how Orlando managed to find him in Prague, which is about as far as the end of the world from Montpellier, France, if anyone asked Sean. He would really like to know how Orlando managed. And what he is doing here. And why it has taken him so long.

“Well, what do you think?” Orlando huffs in response to the ‘how’ and tosses various bits of padding – a scarf, the mittens – as well as his backpack into a corner. “I’m 17. I’m omniscient and rule the bloody world, you know that. Besides, it was not too difficult to find you since you gave me your address –“ His voice changes subtly but the hurt is still audible for someone listening as closely as Sean. “- to write to you.”

Sean feels confused and guilty and irrationally happy and guilty about that. So he says the predictable, “You want a cuppa tea?”

Orlando beams at him and Sean notices how red his cheeks are, must be from the cold. “I’d kill for one,” he says but before Sean can walk past him into the tiny kitchenette, he stops him by putting a hand on the older man’s arm. 

“I better ask straight out,” he says,” Is it okay that I’m here? Say the word and I’m back on the train to Montpellier.”

Sean turns and looks at the boy, no, the young man who stands in his hallway in his ridiculously colourful jacket and the sincere expression on his face. 

Sean’s heart has ached to be parted from him, the need to prove something to himself be damned. And it aches once more, even worse now, at the mere suggestion of Orlando leaving again. There is only one possible answer.

“No,” Sean says quietly but decisively, “please stay.”

For a moment Orlando just looks at him as if a little part of him really has feared that Sean might send him away. It makes him look younger than ever. Then he grins broadly and noisily zips open his jacket. 

“Good. ‘Cause I wouldn’t have had the money for a ticket back and heaven knows what’s the penalty for bunking the train round these parts.”

“Death by icicle probably,” Sean suggests, the right corner of his mouth twitching, and Orlando steps up and hugs him. 

Sean still holds the brush and the woollen hat clutched in his hands when his arms wrap around his surprise visitor in the instinctive response to his embrace. He probably gets black paint onto the boy’s favourite red sweater now, he thinks distractedly, while his body wants to disappear into Orlando. 

Orlando doesn’t have to stand on his tiptoes any longer when he hugs him, he’s now as tall as Sean is, his arms, closing around Sean tightly, are as strong as Sean’s. He still smells as good, feels as good as Sean remembered. Only his nose, that he playfully presses against Sean’s neck before he lets go again, his nose is quite a lot colder right now.

“Now, about that cuppa –“

They put the kettle on in the little kitchenette and Orlando makes fun of the flowery tiles and tells Sean about the train trip and Sean tells Orlando about how cold the nights in Prague are. 

“So,” Sean says and sips his tea, “what did Pierre say when you left him to fend for himself in his restaurant?”

“Was all teary eyed, the idiot,” Orlando says fondly, his feet thud thudding quietly against the counter on which his sits closest to the heater, dangling his legs. “Said he’d go broke without me luring all the female costumers in. To be honest, I felt a bit objectified.”

“You’d make a decent trophy wife, I reckon,” Sean agrees and easily catches the cookie Orlando tosses at him.

“Stop that, you,” the young man says with a mock pout, “I’m in a very crucial phase of my persona finding thingy. You’ll damage me permanently. And you know what they say about customers damaging the goods –“

“They have to pay for them,” Sean supplies, “and keep them.”

Orlando just grins at him around a cookie and Sean wonders whether the implications in that have gone by unnoticed by him.

“Show me what you painted so far, yeah?” Orlando asks suddenly. 

Sean feels himself blush and casts his eyes down, avoiding the younger man’s gaze.

“Please?” Orlando adds, the joking having given way to a gentle prodding and Sean nods reluctantly, sets his cup down. He leads the way to the small studio at the other end of the floor and Orlando follows and chatters on about the fish restaurant and Pierre’s fat old cat and the last weeks’ oddest customers and –

Falls silent.

Sean turns around when Orlando abruptly stops talking and finds him frozen to the spot in the door of the studio. Staring at the canvases, carelessly aligned on the opposite wall.

Sean rubs his nose with his thumb in a gesture of discomfiture and nervousness, even though now, in the sunny afternoon light, it is just an assembly of colours and forms. The deep red, the first layer on the linen, shines through only here and there in midst diagonal broad bold bars of grey and black that push against one another, crowded and crowding. 

The artist spares his work merely a glance, knowing it in and out and still feeling uncomfortable from its harshness. Instead Sean’s eyes fix on Orlando and he looks down again right after, and back up, eagerness and embarrassment battling inside of him.

Orlando still stands unmoving, his gaze glued to the canvas, and a little frown creases his forehead as if he is trying to look away but can’t bring himself to do it. When he finally looks at Sean again and speaks, his voice can’t decide whether to sound in awe or disgusted.

“Oh Sean,” he simply says with a little sigh. And Sean rubs his nose again.

***

It’s early afternoon when Orlando puts down his cup of tea, the third one after the warm up and the impromptu lunch, and decides that they need to go out and find a photo lab. 

Sean doesn’t ask why, he’d just tag along to wherever Orlando would decide to go at this point and a photo lab is by far not the oddest choice of destination Orlando has ever come up with. Of course Orlando explains it to him anyway once they are wrapped in several layers of warm clothes against the cold and stomp through a thin layer of freshly fallen snow on their way downtown. 

“I took pictures on my way here,” Orlando says proudly and adds, “proper ones.” And Sean answers, “What, not 36 perspectives of me nose this time?”

They find a shop and Orlando is impatient enough to pay for extra quick development. While they wait he gapes at the sights on Old Town Square and spends a ridiculous amount of time spitting into the Vltava from the Charles Bridge, as per usual finding the small joys to be the most pleasurable. 

Sean couldn’t agree more and spends more than a ridiculous amount of time just looking at Orlando.

They have coffee in a little place swarmed with tourists, windows fogged from the heating and humidity, and Orlando draws smiles from the tables around them every time he whoops at some motive or other on his pictures before shoving them under Sean’s nose. More often than not the Sean has to ask whether it maybe is upside down but that doesn’t dim Orlando’s enthusiasm even the littlest bit. 

Sean doesn’t paint that evening. Instead he spends it sitting next to Orlando on the couch, both of them hunched over Orlando’s Game Boy and playing ‘Legend of Zelda’. Orlando steers Link through Koholint Island and repeatedly blames Sean for losing his life because he has to laugh so hard at the rather ludicrous background stories Sean makes up along the way. 

Orlando presses the pause button so he won’t miss out on any of the action when Sean needs to go to the loo. When Sean returns to the living room a few minutes later Orlando’s hands still hold the compact video game firmly but he is fast asleep, curled up on the couch. Carefully Sean extracts the miniature computer from the sleeping boy’s grasp and drapes a thick woollen blanket over him before he switches the lights off.

***

Orlando wakes because his feet are cold. Unhappily he buries his face in his pillow and curls up, dragging his feet closer to the rest of his body but to no avail. Grunting he sits up and reaches down to massage his toes back to life through the thick socks he is wearing.

It’s the middle of the night as far as he can tell. The sounds outside on the streets have died down to the odd car driving by every once in a while and the moon shines through the window of the studio. Orlando concentrates but he can’t hear a sound from Sean, just figures that the older man has gone to bed and has not yet reached the state of sleep in which he starts to snore. 

Sean does snore, Orlando knows that. He has a key to his flat and sometimes sneaks in before he has to go to work because his shower is broken or because he doesn’t have anything in the fridge. Sean has strange sleeping habits and Orlando never wakes him, just does whatever he came for under the sound of soft snores coming from Sean’s bedroom.

Orlando’s feet refuse to be revived and so he decides to take drastic measures and sits on them, pulling his blanket up to his chin as he sinks back into the cushions of the sofa. One of the paintings, Sean has been working on before Orlando got here stands on an easel at the other end of the room and stares at him. Orlando stares back, refusing to back down.

He’s tired, really tired, and yet parts of his body are still to uncomfortably chilly for him to go back to sleep. So, he just sits there, open eyed but drifting, his brain too weary for any coherent thought.

“Lan?” Sean’s voice reaches him like a friendly pat on the shoulder and Orlando’s eyes regain focus. “What are you doing?”

Sean stands in the doorway and holds a coffee mug. Orlando doesn’t question his being up, strange sleeping hours and all, but sniffs a bit as if a noseful of coffee smell might wake him up properly. He shifts on the sofa and stretches his legs.

“Staring into space, I guess,” he replies and his voice is sleep roughened. Sean comes over and sits down beside him, pushing his coffee mug into Orlando’s hands. 

“Hm, space yeah?” he asks and his eyes move to the painting Orlando’s unseeing eyes have been glued to only moments before. “Could title it that way, what do you think?”

Orlando wraps his fingers around the earthenware mug. “Dunno,” he huffs, “I suppose ‘I leave country like a chicken and still don’t run fast enough’ would be more appropriate.”

Sean chuckles and Orlando can feel the heat of his body where their shoulders touch. “Bit long, though.”

They stare at the canvas for a while, share the hot and strong coffee, and eventually Orlando says, “You know I can’t decide whether I like it or not.” He makes a vague gesture at the painting. “This, I mean. It intimidates me a bit, that’s what it does. Is that a good thing?

“No.” Sean’s response is immediate and definite but then he adds, “I mean prolly from a critic’s point of view, yeah. But no, I don’t think it good.”

“It’s like I wanna tear the first layer off, the grey tones, you know to get to the red,” Orlando says and his fingers have formed claws, ready to go to work. “I mean I know it’s stupid ‘cause then the canvas would be rubbish, obviously.“

Sean hums noncommittally and Orlando drops his hands into his lap. He stares down at them and feels himself blinking very slowly. His whole body is heavy with lack of sleep and it takes him a surprising amount of willpower to raise his head again and to keep his eyes open. 

“Lan?” Sean says quietly and Orlando can feel his gaze on him. “Maybe you should get a bit of shut eye after all, huh?”

“No,” Orlando grunts, stubbornly. He doesn’t want to sleep, he’d rather just sit here with Sean. Besides, he thinks only a little detachedly, somebody has to guard the bit of red that is still there on the painting. Has to make sure that it doesn’t run away as well.

“Silly boy,” Sean responds to the obstinacy in Orlando’s voice. 

“Fuck off, you tosser,” Orlando replies but without any real force behind his words because he knows that Sean doesn’t mean it. He’s never done any of that grown up shit of patronising him, of ‘knowing what’s best for him’. 

Until that Monday two weeks ago when Sean told him about the commission work in Prague and disappeared the next day. Out of sight, out of mind or something maybe and so far Orlando has refused to be bitter about it. 

He notices that his gaze got caught by the painting again and he shakes his head to get out of the drifting. His eyes catch a last glimpse of the faded slogan on Sean’s pullover as the older man leaves the room. 

Orlando doesn’t know where he’s going and for once, and probably just because it is so late in the night, he doesn’t know what to do. 

The sofa feels too big again and he draws his feet up onto the plushy upholstery and hugs his knees. The cotton of the grey track pants he has borrowed smells of Sean and his favourite washing stuff and it feels soft against his cheek when he lets his head rest against his knee. He stares at the dark doorway with the same curious feeling curling in his belly that drew him back to the painting before. 

Sean’s silhouette, black against the grey of the night, reappears, his motions slow, sure and quiet.

“Where did you go?” Orlando asks and his voice is a bit too loud but he can’t help it.

“It’s cold,” Sean says and when he walks towards the sofa, Orlando sees that he’s carrying bed coverings. “Figured if we’re to sleep here I’d better get more blankets.”

“You’re like fucking Saint Martin,” Orlando says and snorts when as a response Sean just dumps the armful of blankets on top of him. When he re-emerges, his head sticking out of a mass of coverings, Sean flops back onto the couch and looks a bit too smug for Orlando’s liking. 

“Bastard,” Orlando laughs and grabs his pillow and hits Sean over the head with it. He sniggers gleefully when the older man huffs in surprise but then Sean yanks at the pillow and they fight for it, both trying to stifle their giggles because it’s in the middle of the night and the walls aren’t that thick.

Breathing heavily and still chuckling they end up under most of the blankets. Sean is on his back, one arm tucked under his head, the hand of the other resting on his chest, and Orlando lies on his belly beside him, close because the big sofa is only a sofa after all. It’s warm and comfortable and Orlando decides he wouldn’t want to be anywhere else. Still, he shifts a little and says,

“You know, I thought it over and I decided something.” 

Sean chuckles in amusement over Orlando’s official announcement and asks, “What then?”

“It was stupid of you to just leave France.”

Sean’s lips curve into a contrite smile and his short lashes lower. Orlando’s skin itches uncomfortably and he wants to take it back because, however true his words, he doesn’t want to be responsible for the twinge of guilt he has to witness now. But again he doesn’t know what to say to make it better and instead just lies there, wishing he was closer to Sean and not iniquitous ten centimetres away.

Sean opens his eyes again after what feels to Orlando like half an eternity even though it was just two seconds and a sigh. He turns his head a bit and looks at the easel and then he says, “Yeah. Turned out I could paint without having you around. It’s just that it’s depressing stuff.”

“Huh?” is all Orlando responds. What –?

“It’s depressing,” Sean repeats. “I thought we agreed on that?”

“No, not that, the other bit. You left because of -,” Orlando’s voice trails off. ‘Me’ he thinks but can’t bear to say it. “Not the commission?”

He doesn’t understand and frankly, he hates it when that happens. If there hadn’t been a patron, if that wasn’t the reason for the cloak and dagger disappearance then there’s only one –

“There is a commission,” Sean cuts into Orlando’s confusion. “I wouldn’t lie to you.” He pauses for a second and looks at Orlando with an expression on his face that Orlando hasn’t seen there before, doesn’t know how to interpret. “It’s just, I needed to see whether I’d still –”

“What?” Orlando interrupts him, illogically, because he can’t bear the bloody suspense. “Whether you still what?”

“Function without you, I guess,” Sean says, whispers almost. “I do, you see. But it’s been shitty two weeks.”

Orlando stares at him and he is quite sure that his mouth is hanging open. It’s just, he can’t really feel it, he can’t feel any part of his body because apparently it has gone into shock. The first thing he does, however, when he can move again, is cuff Sean’s shoulder with his fist. Hard.

“Ow,” Sean grunts but smiles and doesn’t avert his gaze.

“Well, you deserve it, don’t you?” Orlando says and can’t decide whether to laugh or to hit Sean again. “You just left me, you arse. I thought – I thought it were about me and you and because you didn’t – and I – and, well, you know.” 

He realises that no amount of gesturing can make up for the fact that he’s less than coherent. He knows what he means though and he trusts Sean to understand as well. So the verbal stumble doesn’t frustrate him, he just shrugs and looks at Sean.

“Yeah, I know,” Sean replies and Orlando is surprised that his voice doesn’t sound any different. 

“I love you, too,” Sean says and it’s just his normal voice, the low timbre of it never changing, as if it was the most matter of fact thing in the world. 

Orlando just stares at him because knowing it and hearing it is something else entirely, he discovers. When he watches Sean paint it’s like the older man loses himself in the abstract forms and spiralling colours. It’s not like that now because Sean looks at him and they seem to gravitate towards one another, like they are each other’s destination.

“Too much maybe,” Sean adds quietly after a long moment, but without repentance. “Whether that’s in Montpellier or Prague or on the bloody moon it’s always just you.”

Orlando knows the feeling, the one that makes him skip surfing with his mates just to watch Sean mix colours, makes him stare wide eyed at the ceiling after wanking, made him buy a train ticket to Prague without even thinking about it. It’s that feeling that makes him reach out now for Sean’s hand to offer comfort and support. 

He rests his hand atop the back of his friend’s and his fingers fit perfectly into the spaces between Sean’s. Without hesitation Sean closes his hand and holds on, and Orlando’s fingertips touch the warmth of his palm.

“Does it scare you?” Orlando asks and his thumb shyly-bravely strokes over Sean’s.

Sean shrugs that little shrug and smiles that bashful smile of his. “It did maybe a bit,” His grip on Orlando’s fingers tighten a little as if to make sure that Orlando doesn’t jump up and run away. “I’m not too brave, am I?”

“Not very, no,” Orlando confirms and suddenly the grin on his lips threatens to split his face in two, he’s sure. He laughs quietly and shuffles closer, nudging Sean’s shoulder with his chin. “But your art is really scary shit, man.”

Sean laughs quietly. “Thanks, I suppose,” he says. Then he shifts a bit so he can rest his forehead against Orlando’s, can bury the fingers of his free hand in Orlando’s hair.

“You’re welcome,” Orlando murmurs in response but then he forgets how to speak because his body is too busy to smell and feel Sean close to deal with anything else. He concentrates on the heat coming from Sean’s body to which his own wants to melt until he can mould around Sean or disappear into him. He hears himself purr quietly in response to the gentle strokes of Sean’s fingers against his scalp and there’s really nothing he could do about it even if he wanted to.

****

**94/95**

It’s early in the afternoon but the sun is already setting. Orlando figures it is sorta pretty, all the orange and lilac colours that have sneaked onto the sky when the sun wasn’t surveying so closely any longer. Pretty, if you overlook the shabby roofs and the messy back alley underneath. Prague is a beautiful city, just not from every angle. And let’s not get started on the temperatures here.

Orlando returns to the living room, his hands still wet from rinsing the dishes, and it’s not much of a surprise that Sean has stopped painting. The light is gone and so is Sean, the place behind the easel abandoned, the painting unfinished. Orlando can tell he’s stopped almost mid stroke and there are paint tubes scattered carelessly on the small table, the large brushes dropped into a jar with solvent so they won’t dry. 

It’s not been a good day and Orlando recognises the fading light for what it is, an excuse to get away from the canvas. He rubs his still damp hands dry on his thighs and glances at the easel. Initially, he likes the colours Sean has chosen. But then he remembers the look of slightly frustrated concentration on the artist’s face and consequently, something feels off about the shading. It’s one of the last pieces of the commission Sean has been working on for several weeks now, and maybe it’s just that and not the bloody cold and busy city of Prague.

Orlando picks up a smaller brush that still lies on the small shelve at the bottom of the easel and drops it, too, into the solvent. Sean will clean everything up properly, it’s almost a ritual, like coming to himself again. But for now, he sits in the armchair closest to the window and the sunset, his sock clad feet resting against the heater. It’s working properly today and the living room is cosy and warm, just like Orlando likes it.

He slumps down on the floor, right of the ratty armchair and his knee bumps clumsily against its leg. The right corner of Sean’s mouth curls up into a miniature smile, his green eyes looking down at him with a quiet sort of amusement. Orlando gives him a pout and punishes the armchair by lightly punching its upholstery. Sean’s gaze returns to the sunset outside but Orlando doesn’t really care about any colours that aren’t painted by Sean. 

There is a streak of orange running over the back of Sean’s hand that lies on the armrest, it’s dry and slightly cracked. It tastes of nothing when Orlando leans forward and kisses it. 

Sean holds completely still when Orlando drops tiny kiss after tiny kiss around the orange, rubs his nose playfully against Sean’s wrist. He holds still when Orlando presses his cheek against the back of his hand, closes his eyes and inhales, smelling paint solvent and, strongly, Sean underneath.

He loves Sean’s hands, knows every inch of them by heart. He loves the way the bones stretch underneath the soft skin when Sean flexes them, he loves the way his mouth curves perfectly around their knuckles when he lightly sucks on each one of them. Sean’s hand is pliant under his touch, and Orlando feels a ridiculous sort of gratefulness pooling in his belly. He pushes his hand under Sean’s, caresses the back of the artist’s fingers with his thumb and Sean squeezes back, holding on to him and welcoming the touch. 

Orlando’s lips follow the path of his thumb, tongue darting out to reach the creases between Sean’s fingers, run down the arch of the smallest of them. Sean jerks the littlest bit, ticklish in the most strange of places, before he traces the shape of Orlando’s lips with his pinkie. Orlando closes his eyes at the gentle touch, Sean is memorising the curve of his lips, painting him in his mind. Such a tiny contact but this is Orlando’s purpose, this is where he wants to be. 

When Sean is done Orlando cradles his hand in his own and turns it, leaving it open and vulnerable, laid out just for his selfish worshipping. He kisses Sean’s fingertips and his mouth recognises every swirl of his fingerprints. He kisses his way up the long digits, their elegant slenderness surprising him every time and now, too. He kisses the strong life lines in Sean’s palm, traces them with his tongue. These lines are exactly the same on his own hand, and the knowledge of what that means makes him feel a tenderness for this man that almost hurts. 

Sean’s fingers curl under Orlando’s chin and Orlando smiles against the fleshy ball of Sean’s thumb before he looks up. Again, Sean’s eyes rest on him but now the amusement is gone, replaced by openness and clarity. It is so different from the hazy concentration they bear when he paints that it’s almost like he’s a different man. Orlando is glad that he doesn’t have to decide which one he loves more.

***

Some stands on the market are already closing down early and the quick and quiet hands stack up full and empty boxes of goods and load them into waiting lorries. That done, the men split, just as quickly, just as quietly, and – to find new work, to buy something themselves, to go home – they disappear in the crowd. All but one and Sean’s lips curl into a smile around his cigarette stub. Orlando’s cheeks are red from the wind and the exertion but he seems happy about it, being warm for once, but maybe he just grins because he has spotted Sean beside the dry fountain.

“Hey you,” he says softly and a little out of breath once he has reached Sean. “What are you doing here?”

Sean flicks the cigarette to the ground and waggles his wrist in response, causing the plastic bag that dangles from it to swing back and forth a little. “I ran out of orange,” he explains, “thought I could pick you up on the way back.”

It’s only around noon, but one of the few benefits of the job Orlando has taken on is that he’s finished for the day. That normally shouldn’t make up for the low pay or for the ungodly time in which he gets up, but right now, with the afternoon ahead of them, it does.

“So I see,” Orlando replies and half turns around so he can lean against the wall next to Sean. “Say, do we have any food at all back at the flat?”

“Depends,” Sean says, “if you think oil paint is edible.”

“I hear it tastes great if you let it stew with graphite and charcoal,” Orlando says dead pan and nudges Sean’s shoulder with his own. “Hey, stew, there’s an idea. Might warm my insides up, too. My stomach bears close resemblance to a freezer. An empty freezer.”

“Hm,” Sean hums and even though they have already pushed away from the wall and are about to reach the first market stands he adds, “let’s just hope the paint tastes better than it looks on canvas.”

He feels Orlando’s eyes on him for a moment, a hint of worry that is expressed by Orlando walking a little closer to him now, but then the young man just says, “I’ll cook,” and rubs his mittened hands together in anticipation, ever hungry. “Cause between us I’m surely the one more capable of preparing non poisonous meals.”

Orlando, for all his 17 years, is indeed a half decent cook and besides, Sean would probably even enjoy acrylic stew and graphite soup if only Orlando sits at the other end of the table, smiling at him and talking with a full mouth. ‘I have to each much’, Orlando usually says, ‘my body burns up all the energy trying to keep warm.’

As per usual Orlando takes it from there. Thrown together their Czech consists of fifty words maximum but even though Orlando does a lot of gesturing and pointing he always knows exactly what he wants and, miraculously, the market people seem to know as well. 

They reach a kiosk with baked goods last, already carrying various bags, and Orlando stops and gets in line behind a couple of women, his eyes firmly fixed on the pastries on display. There is a small girl at the beginning of the queue, four or five years old, and she holds on firmly to her mother’s hand while the other presses against the glass. Her round face, framed by blond curls sticking out from under a cap with pink bobbles, looks serious, like she’s on a very important mission.

Her mom asks her something in Czech that Sean doesn’t understand and which the little girl ignores. She just keeps on staring at the pies, probably the one person appreciating the outlaid goods most. The one person safe Orlando, of course.

The woman behind the counter has started smiling at the mother’s words and says, with a tone of voice adults use solely to talk to small children, “Vše nejlepší k narozeninám!”

The woman next in the queue joins in and the girl drags her eyes away from the cakes to beam at them and hold up five outstretched fingers. 

“Narozeniny,“ Orlando says quietly and Sean tilts his head a little to hear him better, „means birthday. She just turned five apparently.”

“How do you know these things?” Sean asks with irony in his voice, though he still is a bit surprised.

“Ah, you know,” Orlando replies and they step up a little when the girl and her mother finally have chosen a cake and move away. “17 and omniscient and all.”

17 but for not much longer. Sean’s usually a bit shit when it comes to remembering dates but Orlando’s birthday surely isn’t one of the things he’d forget. 

“What kind of cake do you want for your birthday?” Sean asks and the corners of his mouth tug upwards when he imagines Orlando here in January, having the same problem to choose that the little girl just had. Somehow Sean’s sure that Orlando would press his nose against the glass barrier as well.

“What?” Orlando asks distractedly as they move forward once again. “You’re gonna paint me one?”

“No. Buy,” he says. “But still, would you want me to choose?”

“Oh,” Orlando grins, understanding, because if there’s something Sean’s worse at than remembering things it’s making decisions. Even if it’s just about birthday cake. “Something with blueberries then,” Orlando decides.

***

Sean wakes from the quiet rustling of a bedspread being carried, a bit of it dragging over the carpet. He blinks awake from his not yet deep slumber when the door to the bedroom is pushed open and Orlando sneaks in.

Orlando does that sometimes. And sometimes he sleeps on the big couch in the living room, especially when Sean’s working late and he wants to keep him company. Sometimes Sean joins him there when the few steps to the bedroom seem too far a distance to cover and Orlando isn’t sprawled over all of the available space. If there’s a pattern to their sleeping arrangements, Sean hasn’t noticed it yet, nor does he really care. All he knows is that even though his mind is still occupied with the torn clouds of a dream, he shifts on the mattress to make room for Orlando now.

Orlando slips into bed beside him and cuddles up in his own blanket. Sean closes his eyes to the quiet huffs he makes as he shuffles back and forth, getting comfortable.

“Sean?” Orlando asks, in a hushed voice, politely, because he knows that Sean’s still awake. “What did you do on your 18th birthday?”

Sean frowns sleepily at the odd question and he opens one eye to glance at Orlando. “Why?”

Orlando shrugs and maybe it really is just one of his random questions like whether it’s true that cat piss glows under black light or how long it takes for one’s toes to freeze off.

So Sean replies, “Nothing much, I guess. I suppose I was at the pub, getting drunk.”

Orlando rolls onto his side and his eyes glimmer with interest. “In Sheffield?” he asks as if anything from Sean’s past is of significance per se.

“‘Course.” 

“What’s it like?” Orlando asks, and his voice is a bit like a child’s, asking for a bedtime story, only that he is too old for that really.

“Sheffield or getting drunk?” Sean asks back.

Orlando laughs quietly but lets the subject of hometowns rest. “Did you feel all grown up and shit when they didn’t throw you out of the pub?”

Sean chuckles but strangely and as usual, Orlando has hit it right on the head. It’s one of those coming of age things that you look back on both with fondness and embarrassment. Like trying to grow a beard, having sex for the first time. 

Sean tucks his right hand under his chin and watches the fingertips of his left tracing Orlando’s jaw. It feels a bit scratchy under his touch, the tangible existence of an evening shadow, and Sean is close enough that he can make out the smoothness of Orlando’s features. Maybe he has forgotten what they’ve been talking about but it can’t have been as important as this.

Orlando has turned his head a little to lean into the touch but his eyes never leave Sean’s. He shuffles a bit closer, like he usually does in his sleep. When Sean drops his hand between them, Orlando reaches out and covers it with his own.

“So, what do you want to do?” Sean asks eventually.

Orlando pushes himself half up onto his elbow and replies with exuberance which means he hasn’t got the slightest idea. He doesn’t let go of Sean’s hand. “Well, I’m thinking of a do on the beach. Hot sun, palm trees and little umbrellas in girly drinks, you know. – Or alternatively, a ritual sacrifice.” 

“You’re saying you either want goat or a beach for your birthday?” Sean asks and amusement tugs at the corners of his mouth. 

“A few buckets full of sand would suffice,” Orlando says but now without the wink. “I don’t really want to invite that many people.”

He looks down at Sean and really seems to want an affirmation that he is understood. 

Of course he is, it feels like the only thing Sean ever understands is Orlando, regardless of whether he’s actually making sense or not. Sean draws his hand out from under Orlando’s and reaches up. It fits perfectly into the slender curve of Orlando’s neck and he pushes up and pulls Orlando’s head down a little at the same time. 

Their mouths don’t touch, almost touch, but for a moment they wait, linger. Sean hears himself swallowing hard and he wants this so damn much that he doesn’t know if he can bear it once he has it. He tilts his head a little, Orlando does the same, waiting, closer still now, and the tip of Orlando’s nose lightly nudges his cheek. Sean inhales, sucks in air that is hot and smells of Orlando and makes him feel delirious for a moment. He exhales in sync with Orlando now and their breaths, warmed and dampened by their mouths, curl around one another between them like a promise.

When their lips meet it is in a kiss they have shared a thousand times and it’s their first. It’s colours, strong and unmixed, suddenly blossoming behind Sean’s closed eyes, and forming patterns he knows by heart. Orlando’s lips feel just like his voice sounds, just like his words speak to Sean, they feel soft and made for this, they taste strong and exotic and familiar. 

“Sean,” Orlando breathes into his mouth. And Sean is surprised that he can speak at all, feels curiously jealous and lets his tongue chases his name in Orlando’s mouth, as if there shouldn’t be anything else but them together right now. Orlando lets him and yields, meets Sean’s tongue with his own and he presses closer when Sean smiles at the light-heartedness of it all.

One of them whimpers and the other hums in response, Sean isn’t sure who’s doing what. The sounds can’t be heard, can only be felt on their lips, in their kiss. Orlando pushes him back onto the bed and Sean feels his heavy weight pressing him down, Orlando’s careful hand weaving through his hair almost tentatively as if not to wake either of them.

Through the layers of their pyjamas Orlando’s erection is hard against Sean’s thigh and Sean’s aware of that, aware of the heat suddenly radiating from Orlando’s body. But his mind notices it in passing and fleetingly, can’t make out the importance of it, because they’re kissing and Sean doesn’t think he can ever concentrate on anything else when Orlando moans into his mouth like that.

Orlando tilts his head, willing Sean’s tongue deeper, and he growls when his hips jerk, push against Sean as if there’s nothing he can do about it. Sean’s hand slides to the small of his back to steady and, selfishly, to pull him closer, and again Orlando growls, sounding both grateful and helpless.

His fingers push under Sean’s t-shirt, their motion a little feverish and aimless, only to be calmed by skin contact. This it what it feels like for Sean as he arches into the touch, hisses into the kiss when Orlando’s blunt nails scrape over his ribcage possessively, the thin fabric of the shirt bunching up. They break their kiss for the second it takes them to pull it off and drag Orlando’s pullover over his head. They fumble a little and without much elegance but sudden need mixed with a giggle from Orlando when he struggles with one sleeve. He’s still grinning when he leans in to kiss Sean again. Sean moans and every fibre of his body seems to join in, quietly humming wherever his skin touches Orlando’s now. 

His hand closes over Orlando’s naked upper arm and tugs, slides down his side and pushes, equally needy, and Orlando is eager to please, avaricious to get even closer when he shifts to come to lie on top of Sean. His narrow hips push Sean’s thighs apart and they both groan quietly, tiny kisses and licks, soft hands stilling, when Orlando’s cock rubs against Sean’s. Sean feels the words on his lips when Orlando whispers brokenly, “Oh God,” and starts shaking in the effort to get back in control.

It’s like Sean is parched and Orlando is water and Sean has to kiss him again. Orlando whimpers and struggles a little, both trying to get away to draw this out and trying to get closer, and Sean wraps his legs around Orlando’s to ensure it is the latter. 

Orlando shakes his head, breaks the kiss once again and his eyes change into a colour that Sean will spend his life trying to capture on canvas. “No, no,” he whispers. “Too close – I’m too – not yet -.” 

There is something in his voice that takes Sean a moment to recognise, it’s so unusual for Orlando. It’s a timbre of uncertainty, of nervousness, of intense wanting but not really knowing what. Sean is no longer 17 but it doesn’t make any difference at all, for a moment he thinks he is just as overwhelmed and desperate, just as needy and vulnerable. But his body reacts instinctively and strongly, his embrace tightens, his kiss is soft. “It’s okay,” he murmurs against Orlando’s trembling lips. “I’ve got you.” 

It’s then that Orlando stops shaking, stops moving at all. His mouth falls open and his lips are softer, so pliant when Sean’s tongue slips between them, when he gives in, when he comes. It’s just his breathing hitching the littlest bit, the smallest of tremors running through his body, the quietest of moans escaping his lips. 

Sean clings to him, feels it all, knows it all. He can smell Orlando’s sweat and his release, feels it on his chest, feels the cotton of his pyjamas against his cock, dampened from Orlando’s come. He inhales sharply and follows. And now Orlando’s tongue is in his mouth, again they are sharing the sound, the taste, the smell, the feeling when Sean climaxes.

They continue kissing until Sean can’t hear his pulse rushing in his ears any longer, until his heart no longer makes his body shudder with each beat. Orlando pulls back a little bit then, his lower arms framing Sean’s head. His fingers play with Sean’s hair and he nudges Sean’s nose with his own and asks quietly, “You alright?”

Sean wants to answer that he is, that his life really has been alright, the right life, the only possible one since Orlando has stumbled into it. He wants to say that there’s just one thing that feels better than being able to paint, and that is Orlando’s nose nudging his just like this.

In the end, he doesn’t say any of it. Instead he returns the gesture, his nose gently pushing against Orlando’s in an Eskimo’s kiss, and he strokes down Orlando’s back. Orlando growls triumphantly and lightly bites his chin.

“Rawr,” he says and Sean has to laugh.

***

It is snowing like crazy on January, 13th. Course it doesn’t mean that Orlando doesn’t go to work. The fact that it’s his birthday earns him a toothy grin from the farmer he’s working for and an apple which he eats on the way home. Melting snow dripping from his nose, his chin, the rest of him, he opens the door to the flat quietly because he’s not sure whether Sean’s up yet. Over the last weeks he has painted about every awake minute that he hasn’t been eating or kissing Orlando, sometimes even then which lead to paint in interesting places.

Orlando sheds a couple of the layers of clothing and shakes himself like a dog would to get rid of the remaining snowflakes.

“Woof woof.”

He turns around and finds Sean in the kitchen’s doorframe, wearing a smirk, his hand curled around a mug of tea. Orlando tosses a wet mitten in his general direction. 

“I think we’re having the apocalypse right here in Prague,” he announces. “Seriously. – Didn’t think you’d be up already.”

“Well,” Sean says and steps back into the kitchen, “I had to bake a cake, didn’t I?”

“Really?” Orlando doesn’t try to keep the scepticism out of his voice and Sean laughs. When he steps into the kitchen it’s actually not messy for once and on the little wooden table stands a cake. He moves closer and sniffs it but it doesn’t smell burned but faintly of blueberries.

“Don’t worry,” Sean says and Orlando looks up at him. “It’s edible. I got it from that place on the market.”

“I’m extremely relieved to hear that. It’d be really uncool to die of indigestion on one’s birthday,” Orlando says and slumps onto a chair, his mouth already watering. When he pulls the cake closer so he can cut a slice out of it he notices a flat and longish envelope, slid half under the plate. He looks at Sean leaning against the counter.

“What is that?” 

“Look for yourself,” Sean replies and rubs his nose with his thump, watching. Orlando pulls the envelope towards him and picks it up. It is a little crumpled and frayed around the edges, as if Sean has carried it around in the back pocket of his jeans like he does it with stuff. Orlando flashes Sean another questioning look, then he opens it. Two identical strips of paper slide out into Orlando’s hands. He stares at them and then at Sean.

“It’s plane tickets,” he says, blinking, and Sean nods. He looks down at the paper again, but the small letters haven’t changed. Two tickets with their names on them. Disbelievingly, Orlando reads very carefully, word by word, and still feels like he’s not really understanding it. “That’s next month,” he finally says.

“Figured it might take you a while to roll up your socks,” Sean replies simply but Orlando can feel his eyes on him. He can’t drag his own away from the tickets just yet. His name, Sean’s, the name of an airport that means nothing to him but is like a word of greeting on a doormat, another world just waiting to be explored.

“I might give my boss a bit of a warning this time,” he says, feeling considerate even though his mind is already miles away from Prague and the cold. He grins when an image of Sean painting in the sun, shirtless because of the warmth, is one of the first pictures that forms. “Have time to pack up your paint and stuff,” he adds consequently and jumps up, not really to do that right now but because all of a sudden he finds it impossible to sit still. “And find us something to stay for the first few days.” A house boat would be cool, wouldn’t it, Orlando always wanted to –

“Where we’re going?” Sean asks, pulling Orlando out of his contemplations.

Orlando frowns and reflexively looks at the tickets again. “What do you mean?” he asks. “You’re not that bad a geography that you don’t know that –“ He halts mid sentence and looks at Sean, realisation dawning. “Wait a minute. You have no idea where we’re headed,” he states but questioningly because all he can think of is, “How?”

“Well,” Sean shrugs and suddenly finds his tea very interesting again. “I went to a travel agency and all. I just couldn’t choose between all the possibilities.” Another shrug. “And there was this nice lass working there, so –“

For a moment Orlando just stares at Sean, his mouth hanging open when slowly and disbelievingly his mind fills in what Sean’s left open. “So,” he says slowly, “you let her choose?!”

Sean still doesn’t look at him but shifts from one foot to the other. “You know how shit I am with decisions. I just told her that I wanted somewhere warm.” He looks up and offers a sheepish smile. “‘cause you don’t like the cold. And for your beach party.”

“That’s so mental,” Orlando says dumbly, and realises that he sounds like his mother right now. “And really, really cool.”

Guarded green eyes meet his. “So, you like it?” Sean asks hopefully. 

“Like it?” Orlando repeats, his eyebrows arching and a smile threatening to split his face. “It’s brilliant!” 

Sean looks down at the mug in his hand and swirls it a little, nothing of the enthusiastic restlessness of Orlando’s pacing but yet the same. There is a quiet sort of happiness in his smile, a mixture of smugness and shyness, that makes Orlando forget about the exiting flight for a moment. Because all he can think of is that he wants Sean to wear that smile always. He stuffs the tickets into the back pocket of his jeans and steps in front of Sean to be closer to that smile, to kiss it.

“So,” he says when Sean’s arms wrap around him and his hands have found their favourite place on Sean’s slender hips. “I was thinking of a house boat. And maybe I could get a job in a shop this time. I think I’d be really good at selling saws and tool belts and stuff.”

Sean’s right brow arches up. “Saws?” he repeats slightly confused. “Where exactly are we going?”

“Hm?” Orlando hums, his innocent act not the least bit convincing. “Oh, I’m so not telling you.”

 

 

****

**2009**

It’s one of those slice of life things. Like when you just lean back in your chair, the damn comfy one they have in the lobby of this rather posh gallery, and you’d feel bored if you weren’t in such a good mood. As it is, you just sit here, pretend to read the exhibition catalogue and think, “Fuck, I’m a lucky bloke.”

You tap your toes and even they are happy, maybe because you actually washed them and put on socks that matched and wouldn’t disgrace you if the legs of your slacks bunch up. 

You let your fingers glide over the glossy paper of the catalogue and look at the tiny reproductions of paintings you saw being born. You scan the neatly printed text next to them, nice layouting job by the way, and a smile sneaks onto your lips when it’s all ‘rich tonal values’ and ‘lyrical dream exploration’ and ‘archaic explosion of colours’. Nothing of ‘fucking piece of shit, I’m going to bed’ only that he never actually says that but just glares at the easel before he starts to smoke one fag after the other until you throw a Mars bar at him. 

Mind, you like the fancy descriptions and the art critics' interpretations, not just because everyone likes listening to praise. You can talk a thousand words a minute but you’d never find the right ones for his art and he doesn’t care one way or the other.

Where is he anyway? You should probably get up and go and rescue him from the gallery owner or someone. You raise the catalogue so no one sees you grinning when you think about the look on his face this morning, when you woke him up and he remembered the opening. He doesn’t like events like this one and avoids them whenever he can. It’s not so much that he’s too shy to appear in public, though you suspect he likes people to think he is. It’s just that once he has finished a painting he loses interest in it like that – 

You snap your fingers and it echoes in the sacred halls and a few visitors turn their heads your way. You grin at them and give a little wave over the rim of your catalogue and the earnest faces above black turtleneck pullovers flash in responding instinctive smiles, surprising them more than you. They return staring at the bigass paintings from up close, so they can see each stroke of his brush, each splatter of paint, from far away, so the large canvases tower over them like Argonaths or something. 

His paintings never find a place on the walls of your houses and you suppose he couldn’t care less whether they are shown in the National Gallery or are stashed away in the attic. You’ve read about method actors (that bloke you met in Denmark claimed to be one but you aren’t sure whether he wasn’t just a bit of a loon, even if an amiable one) and maybe it’s something like that – the paintings, the reason why he did them, stay with him whatever happens to the actual result.

You spend a bit of time eating pistachios someone has decorated – there is no other word for it – on the small glass table next to you and their salty goodness makes you thirsty. There has to be wine somewhere here, in close proximity to the canapés probably and you get up to search. A handful of pistachios wander into the pockets of your trousers. He loves them and you know he will be able to smell them on you from ten metres afar anyway.

He turns around when you walk into the adjoining room and you’d say that he has a sixth sense for your presence if you didn’t know that no one except you scuffs loudly in a place like this. He’s talking to some art critic woman and he looks dutiful which equals bored. You scuttle over, hands in your pockets, to stand next to him. Above you is a series of pictures he’s painted in the late 90s – you remember the humid air and the dusty dry beaches of Tunisia and besides, he always writes the years into the lower right corner. The mustard coloured forms move closer together the longer you look and you feel the sleeve of his pullover sliding against your shirt as he shifts a bit in your direction, like he usually does. 

You adapt his well-behaved expression and nod a bit to whatever the woman asks and says. The nod turns into a sort of see sawing back and forth on your heels. It irritates her a bit, her eyes keep darting to you, and you suppose it’s a bit like when you fear that your newly best friend’s puppy is about to pee on the carpet. You offer her some of your pistachios. 

She might think of the annoying boyfriend when she writes her article but you know she’ll still praise his work. Because her cheeks turn pink under her red rimmed glasses when he chuckles softly at one of her compliments and casts his eyes down modestly. Oh, yeah, and because he’s a fucking awesome artist whose paintings can scare the shit out of you and offer you shelter at the same time. Explosions of colours indeed - ‘course you like them best when they happen behind your closed eyelids as paint smeared fingers glide down your naked back, lingering just there where it meets your arse. But then, this is probably not really for public consumption and art galleries and critics that write notes on little pads. 

You couldn’t help but sigh happily and longingly at the thought and the art critic takes the hint or maybe your pistachios just made her thirsty, too. As she turns away, he leans over and lightly nudges your temple with his nose, his hand touching the small of your back. “Thanks,” he says. 

“Anytime,” you reply and turn your head so the tips of your noses touch. 

“That so?” he asks, playfully because he knows the answer. 

“Yeah,” you say simply. You see him closing his eyes briefly and inhaling you, never taking you for granted even though he might as well.

****

**2002**

_On a yellow Post it note, sticking to the door of the fridge_

Sean,  
I’m out surfing – just in case you noticed me not being there and wondered whether I dropped into that space between bed and wall. Will be back some time this afternoon – looking forward to seeing you awake.  
Orlando

 

_Scribbled on an open sketch pad right underneath strangely shaped rocks done with a 7B_

Lan,  
Next time put your letter somewhere for me to find before I searched under the bed for you. You’re still not back and I’m bored shitless – will go to see whether someone's at the store (heater still needs a talking to) and hope to see you when I come back. Awake or asleep, don’t matter to me.  
S.

 

_On the same sketch pad with a chewed on ballpoint pen found in Orlando’s pocket_

Seanie,  
I love the new one, what with the lilac and green. Am asleep on my feet already, so I suppose you’ll find me in bed. SLEEPING.  
Orlando  
P.S. Doesn’t matter, eh? I thought I snored.

 

_Written in almost-darkness onto the back of an add for drycleaners that came in the post_

Orlando,  
the light’s shit in here, excuse the scrawl. Just for the record: You do snore, specially when you lie on your back and take up all the space like you do right now. I rather like it, just so you know.

 

_On a proper piece of smooth lily white paper_

Light’s much better when you write during, like, daytime. You know, that part of the 24 hours you usually sleep through for whatever reason? Sun’s shining outside, too. – I might snore but you talk in your sleep. I had a proper conversation with your sleeping self just now, you prolly won’t remember. You told me the green in your painting represents leprechauns and to get you beer. What where you dreaming?! Being Irish?  
I love you and your weird brain and the way you hide your head under the pillow when the sun comes up. I really do.

 

_On the back of the same paper, now rather crumpled_

I got your note before I searched under the bed for you this time. I suppose you left it on your pillow? I found it somewhere under my belly, though. When you find this one – under your pillow – wake me and gimme a kiss. I have a feeling I might want one.  
Love, Sean  
P.S. Leprechauns? Really? I’m just surprised that your mad giggling didn’t wake me.

 

_On the torn out page of a note pad, borrowed from and sceptically handed to one of Orlando’s co-workers_

Orlando,  
how can you work in a place where no one speaks bloody English? I hope you get this note. I’m headed to that place on the beach with the peculiar rocks, you know the one. Gonna do a bit of sketching but I don’t know when I’ll be back tonight. I wanted to make dinner – stuff’s in the fridge – but, you know. – Read the other note I left you. I definitely want one.  
Sean

 

_On the back of a voucher (beer, kippers, cigarettes, peppermint gum) found in Orlando’s pocket_

To the reader of this note, the one person more in love with rocks than a good steak,  
You want it? I’ll just sit here and wait for you to finish, yeah? You can start kissing me any time you’re done.  
Love, Me  
P.S. I don’t giggle. Much. Do I?

****

**2008**

There's orange juice dripping from your chin. Thick pearls of it linger for a second before they grow too heavy and drop onto your chest. They glide smoothly down the damp, tanned skin, destination belly button maybe. And another one and another, drop drop, as you suck on the overly ripe fruit.

"You want some?" you ask and lick your lips.

"Too messy," I say and my tongue darts out as well.

You snort and toss away the skin of your last piece 'cause it's bitter and you still have a full net left anyway.

"Like you care."

It tastes better if I lick it of your skin. Sweetness mixed with the ever present salt from the ocean. Drink your taste underneath, lick the skin not as darkly tanned, just as hot and wanting.

"Are you finished in there?" you ask and gesture towards the house, another piece of orange in your fingers. Drop drop, some of the juice trickles down your hand, your wrist onto your thigh.

I shrug, lean against the frame of the open veranda door. "The light has changed."

"Yeah?" You say, licking your fingers clean. "Since when does that matter?"

There's yellow paint right over your nipple. Shaped like my thumb, a bit smeared cause you didn't hold still, shifting, arching under me. Four fingers in yellow grace your side since last night, my hand twitches to cover the stains, rub them deeper into your skin.

"You wanna go for a walk?" I ask and cast my eyes over the deserted beach. "We could get some fresh fish from the village for supper, some wine maybe."

"'S that involve me having to move?" You ask skeptically."Cause I'd rather not."

You stretch out your legs and I watch how your toes dig two little molehils. You never get sunburn except on your feet and so they hide in the sand. You're done with your oranges for now and lean back, propped up on your elbows and your eyes, your smile, your body - open and inviting.

"How were the waves?" I ask and the sand is hot and soft when I walk over, step over you, my bare feet almost touching your hips.

"Killer, man." You grin. "Sidi grew webs, too. See that hill over there? He dug himself a hole to nap in it."

"Like master, like mutt," I say and you wriggle your feet under the makeshift molehill. Your fingertips dance over the back of my toes, the bridge of my feet and sneak under the rim of my jeans. 

"I think," you say very seriously and your thumbs stroke down my shins, your hands close around my ankles, "I think I'm in love with your anklebones."

"I surely hope so," I reply. "What about my wrists?"

"You're gorgeous all around," you say. You look up at me and squint against the sun, smiling. "Come down here already, you."

I laugh, drop to my knees. The sand is hot and soft under my palms when I brace them next to you, the sun is burning and gentle on my back when you pull my shirt over my head. Your skin is smooth and warm under my lips. Sweetness mixed with the ever present salt from the ocean. I drink your taste underneath, lick the skin not as darkly tanned, just as hot and wanting.

****

**1995, February**

“… So, my flight is supposed to board at 11.45 now. – Yeah, still nervous, but I’m so looking forward to seeing you!”

I switch off my mobile phone and place it next to my cup of coffee. It seems almost eager to ring again, another quietly spoken conversation waiting in the wings. Despite the delay of my flight (and my fear of flying in general) I’m still in a fairly good mood, thank modern technology for that. My best friend reassured me that my plane won’t crash, that she’d pick me up and told me a dirty joke to cheer me up as well. I really can’t wait to see her. 

When I arrived the only table still free in the business lounge was close to one of the windows to the gateway. That suits me just fine now as I sip from my coffee and watch the silent movie of people passing by. Confused stumbling, purposeful strides, lazy strolling, hectical jogging, you name it. No one is ever standing still. 

There's a small souvenir shop steadily swallowing and spitting out people right opposite my window. My eyes follow a young man in a black hoodie, loose jeans and ratty sneakers who just came out. His nose is buried so deep in the little plastic bag bearing the logo of the shop that I can't see much of his face, only a mob of unruly brown curls framing it. He searches through the bag's contents while he slowly walks down the hall, then he stops in front of the rest rooms. There he leans against a wall and finally pulls out a couple of postcards he's just bought. 

I can't tell what they show but it seems to amuse him, a private smile on his lips as he sorts through them. The smile as well as the rest of his features seem both boyish and serious, both unfinished and handsome and I’m quite aware that I’m staring and still can’t bring myself to look away.

His eyes dart up from the pictures every time the rest room door opens but it's only after a few minutes that he pushes himself away from the wall. He steps up to a blond man in jeans and a dark green jacket, his height but about twenty years older and a little green around the nose. Still, the blond seems to relax when he spots the young man and shakes his head when the dark haired boy touches his arm. 

I smile at the contrast of open concern and the timid acceptance of it - ’You okay? Really? Sure?’ ‘Better now, thanks. Yes.’ - before ordering another cup of coffee and a buttered croissant. The waiter has a sweet French accent and is kinda cute – I should probably kidnap him for my best friend, she’s such a sucker for foreign accents.

When I look back out through the window I’m surprised that the two men are still there, only a few feet further down the hall where a bench provides temporary rest. It's not difficult to follow their conversation even though I can't hear them through the thick glass. It's only the younger man talking anyway and he does so with exuberant gestures as much as words. Apparently it's not too easy buying postcards in an airport shop – probably something along the lines of ’I was surrounded by an army of brats and old hags, seriously. Twas scary.’. 

Every gesture, every grin of the younger man practically screams ‘I’m fucking excited and expectant and no one give me any more sugar or I’ll explode – weee’ through the soundproof window. It’s quite adorable in its completely unsubtle way. 

The blond man doesn’t say much but still his body language, the way he seems to notice everything the younger man does, says, thinks, that speaks just as clearly. 

When the dark haired boy throws his arms in the air and waves his postcards around rather frantically - ’I swear, there’s a law ‘bout having to write from the airport, man’ - the blond quirks one eyebrow, the corners of his mouth tug upwards a fraction and he responds with something short and probably mumbled - ’Tasteless motive on the card obligatory, too?, maybe. When the younger one looks at him incredulously before bursting out laughing, the older just sits back on the cheap bench and rubs the back of his index over his lower lip, the smile underneath smug. 

When we were kids and in our grow-up-to-be-a-world-famous-detective phase my best friend and I used to observe ‘suspicious’ people (like our kindergarten teachers and the milkman). Sometimes, we made up their conversation when we couldn’t hear them, going by our victims’ behaviour alone. You learn to read body language like that, and it’s a skill that is even more valuable than lip reading if you ask me.

But really, with the two men on the little bench you don’t need any special skills. You just need eyes. 

The boy grins, then shoves a few of the postcards into his companions chest. And indeed the blond picks one, shakes his head over the motive (a pair of breasts decorated with a blue-white-red bikini, fitting for the location). They both start to scribble with their knees as writing surface, leaning over each other’s shoulders every once in a while, sniggering at what the other has come up with. Easy camaraderie and boyish delight over the smallest of shared insider jokes – I’m sure no one but them will understand the finished postcards.

My mobile phone quietly announces another call. Gotta be my best friend again and I set my cup down. 25 minutes till boarding time and she takes my mind off the flight with crude jokes that would fit perfectly onto bosom postcards.

***

 

"My feet hurt like a bitch," she mutters in a tone of voice that only 16 year old girls are capable of. I barely have a chance to turn my head and look at her before she's dropped down onto the next chair and kicked her shoes off. The shiny black ones with the high heels that she insisted on wearing even though they aren’t very convenient for travelling.

"I think they might just rot off any second now," she says, more to herself than to me or the world in general and pulls her left foot onto her lap to critically inspect it. I know that she doesn't have smelly feet (no one in our family has) but the old couple sitting closest to us shoots us glances that are at least a bit disapproving. 

"Do you know that song," I say conversationally, "'These boots are made for walking'? Don't you have it on your walkman or something?"

"Sometimes," she replies and glares at me, "you say such Mom things.”

"Your Momma’s a very wise woman,” I say and she rolls her eyes at me.

“Right. Whatever, Dad,” she huffs, pulls out her walkman and pushes the tiny headphones into her ears, skull earrings dangling underneath. With her slipping into Paradise Lost and my wife still wandering around in the paradise of duty free, I suddenly find myself alone in translation, that not-really-place. 

I dimly recall reading an article about an Iranian who lives on some French airport since 1988. Well, I can barely stand the few hours we have until our connecting flight to Sacramento leaves. Too many baggy eyes, too much stale smoke, too many people in need of a shower and a bed and some peace and quiet.

Not too many of the seats around us are occupied, people tend to keep closer to either the shops or their departure gates. There's a mother with two kids, all three of them napping, that old couple slowly munching on something that looks like celery and two men on the other side of the passage, just opposite of me.

Five seats have been designed close together over there and over four of them the younger of the two is sprawled. He lies on his side, knees bunched up and sneakers propped against the plastic back of the last chair. Using a dark green jacket as a makeshift blanket he has his right hand tucked under his cheek and hasn't moved a fraction since we came, no fluttering of the closed eyelids, nothing. His features are relaxed in a peaceful slumber, trusting the world not to disturb him, trusting the other man to watch over him maybe.

The space on the seats is limited and the young man’s dark curls press against the side of the older man’s thigh. He reads a magazine, his arms raised a bit to not disturb the sleeping boy. I tilt my head a little - a soccer mag it is, a Brit maybe. He looks like it to me, if there is such a thing as a British look. Raised on bitter and rainy weather. He’s got slightly shaggy strawberry blond hair and I suppose the fact that he's not cleanly shaved isn't really due to the airport situation. 

He's absorbed in the study of his magazine, frowning a little at the results presented and he mutters something to himself, too quiet for me to make out, and lowers the paper with a look of disgust on his face. 

He catches me watching then and, returning the gaze of oddly intense green eyes, I offer a smile of sympathy - I have no idea of European soccer but I know how it is when the 49ers are on a losing streak. After a moment of confusion, as if he's not used to random people grinning at him (or paying attention to him at all) he responds in kind and shrugs lightly. 

His eyes flicker away from me and back, the smile slightly broader now. And I chuckle quietly when my gaze follows his and I see the reason of his friendly amusement. My daughter is fast asleep by now, the custom teenager pout softened. An odd contrast between the innocent slumber and the studded choker.

When I look back to the blond on the other side of the hallway his eyes are cast down, again that look of concentration on his features as he pulls the youngster's jacket higher over his shoulder. His right hand loosely entangles with longish brown curls that look soft and weave around his fingers the instant he touched them. He's hunched over and when the younger man shifts slightly, on the edge of waking, the blond murmurs something quietly, that makes his companion still again. 

Without opening his eyes the sleeping boy’s lips curl upwards before he draws his hand up, hiding behind it like a kid would bury its face in its father's chest.

“Are we there yet?” he asks, quietly and barely understandable.

“Does it look like it?” The older man replies with amusement. Both of them definitely British.

The young man sits up, long legs unfolding, but he still keeps the jacket pulled up to his chin like a blanket. He yawns and shakes his head as if trying to get rid off the sleepiness. It only makes even more of a mess of his hair and he still blinks a little tiredly at no one and nothing in particular. The blond man notices both and I can see his fingers twitch as if he wants to straighten the curls – my daughter would probably throw a hissy fit if I touched her carefully made up hair. In the end the blond doesn’t reach out either but returns his attention to his magazine.

“Did we lose again?” the boy asks suddenly and I’m a bit surprised that he’s not just gone back to sleep. When the blond huffs in affirmation he sighs heavily and says, “Sucks, man. No footie luck this year.” 

I have to hide my amusement at the crestfallen tone of voice in which the younger man speaks and, translating ‘footie’ to ‘football’ to ‘soccer’, I wonder where they’re travelling. My daughter used to play in the school team until she suddenly thought it ‘uncool’. The dark haired boy looks a little too old for Highschool, though not much.

“You think they have a team there?” he asks with something like hope.

“Dunno”, the older man replies with a shrug, “prolly not.”

“Hm,” the boy hums, all eagerness now as he turns towards the other man. “We’ll found our own club then, yeah?”

The blond quirks an eyebrow but looks at his companion with something that is not just indulgence. “You serious?” he asks back, not really encouraging but still testing the idea. I suppress a chuckle – can’t blame him, you give your kids an inch and they’ll take a mile.

“Uh huh,” the dark haired boy grins and coaxes, “You can be goalie if you wanna -”

“Forget it,” the blond says, his accent thickening in his definite response. I frown at the harsh refusal but then, surprisingly, he finishes, “We’re taking turns. Cup’s as good as mine.” 

And there’s a glimmer in his green eyes that suddenly turns the younger man’s cajoling into a promise. They share a grin, the younger man’s knee bumps against the other man’s thigh, stays there. The blond looks at him from under lowered lashes, the younger one winks at him. There is easy familiarity in that but also – 

It’s not – they’re not –

Oh.

I clear my throat as if that would get rid off my misconception only I noticed. The nosy elderly couple glances up from their celery again but when I look back to the two men neither of them look back. The younger one’s eyes are closed again and his head rests on the other’s shoulder. He has resumed reading his magazine. 

Not father and son. 

Someone sits down next to me. 

“I got you a statue of liberty chocolate bar,” my wife says and lightly pokes my hand with NYC’s landmark. 

I turn and grin at her. “Are we there yet?” I ask and she rolls her eyes and chuckles.

***

When I pictured our honeymoon my mind might have glossed over out a few details. Say, the fact that our connecting flight is late and we have to spend three hours in translation. Say, the fact that the airport’s Mc Donald’s isn’t exactly my idea of a romantic restaurant. Say, the fact that my newly wed husband leaves a little pool of drool on his makeshift pillow / lower right arm across the table where he fell asleep on me.

Still, nothing of this spoils my good mood. Stepping around him carefully I get myself another slice of pie that he loves so much. Inhaling its sweet hot scent I make my way back to our little red table. The one next to ours is occupied by two men now and both look up at me when I sit down again.

“Have a nice meal,” I say, voice a little subdued – silly really because my husband can sleep through anything. 

“Thanks,” replies the older one and after a quick connecting glance at my sleeping man he gives me a little smile.

The younger man’s eyes momentarily linger on my slice of pie despite the mountain of junk food he has piled on his tray. Then he grins and nods at my husband, “Food induced coma?”

“You could say so,” I reply with amusement. 

“Man, I’ll eat myself into a stupor,” he says with emphasis while unwrapping the first of his burgers, then he looks at the older man, “You think that is possible?”

“I have faith in you, Lan” the blond man says dryly, voice pure Northern England.

“’ankf,” is the barely understandable reply around a mouthful of Big Mac. “’pre’ffiate id.”

It’s rather impressive that he doesn’t spit parts of his meal all over the table when he talks. But it seems a close enough call, so while the older man helps himself to the French fries, he concentrates on inhaling his burger. 

The expression of bliss on his face is quite similar to the one on my husband’s and for a moment I ask myself if my slumbering love is dreaming of me or if it’s fast food as well. As if he’s heard me he snuffles in his sleep and raises his hand to rub his nose and blindly reaches out for me. Our fingers entwine in the middle of the table and he squeezes my hand without waking properly.

When I look up from our joined hands, the shimmer of our wedding bands glimmering in my eyes, I catch the older of the two men watching me. He casts his eyes down instantly and a blush, somehow not really fitting the square jaw and the strong nose, spreads over his cheeks, caught-in-the-act like. When he glances over again I wink at him.

“Naaw,” the younger man, Lan, all but coos and I feel my cheeks reddening a little even though his tone of voice is nothing but amiable. Both my eyes and the older man’s fix on him and he grins a carefree grin. “Sweet,” he chirps at the blond and I realize that he’s teasing him, not me.

“Sometime,” the blond huffs and a practiced hand picks up a stray straw and makes writing motions in the air with it. “I’ll write ‘nitwit’ on your belly with permanent marker while ye’re sleeping.”

The younger man winks at me, stuffs the last bite of his burger into his mouth, licks his fingers and asks cockily, “Can you even spell that, Sean?”

“Hey, I did finish school,” Sean replies dead pan. 

The young man just laughs and gives him a one fingered salute. “Outch, that was low,” he chuckles but goes on, “I demand it in calligraphy at least. Over my hipbone, right side, what’dya say?” He looks expectantly at the older man. “I want a tattoo there anyway.”

“Mebbe ‘idiot’ isn’t the best idea, though,” Sean replies with a chuckle. He puts the straw he’s been toying with onto the tray and rests his hands on the table. “What do you want?” 

“Dunno yet,” Lan shrugs and methodically opens up all remaining boxes and wrappings on his tray. “Maybe you –“, he starts and his eyes flick up to search Sean’s for a moment. But he doesn’t finish his sentence, casts his eyes down again. 

All of a sudden I feel guilty for eavesdropping and stare at our flight documents, half buried under my husband’s arm. But still, when Sean asks almost bashfully, “Take me with ye when you pick something?” I can’t help but wait for Lan’s reply.

He answers with a slowness and quietness that seems uncharacteristical for him. “You could design it if you wanna,” he says. His right hand still fiddles with his French fries but the left rests unmovingly on the table and he looks up at Sean.

Sean stretches out his fingers to cover Lan’s hand with his own and squeezes it lightly. There’s something in his green eyes so intense that it sparks thoughts and images in my mind even though it’s not directed at me. Artwork, simplistic, archaic and playful, curls against an exposed hipbone and black ink is irreversibly pushed under darkly tanned skin. Still it only imitates something much deeper, much more permanent.

'American Airlines, Flight AA 5052 - '

The sudden airport announcement startles all three of us –

’Passengers of American Airlines flight AA 5052 bound for Barbados due to depart at 15.45: There will be a delay of 20 minutes due to fuel line mechanical problems.’

My husband huffs and shifts a little without waking up but I sigh and glower at the flight tickets on the table.

“Your plane?” the younger man asks and when I turn my head to look at him, his hand is still covered by Sean’s but he looks at me compassionately.

I nod but am already smiling again. “It’s our honeymoon,” I say, mostly because I like saying it out loud. “We just got married.”

“Congratulations,” Sean says and Lan pops a French fry into his mouth and asks, “Beach holiday?”

“Yeah,” I reply with a goofy grin, I’m sure. “It’s gonna be amazing.”

While I finish my pie I tell them about our plans for Barbados, of lazing around on the beach and snorkeling and – well, I leave out other activities involving my husband, me and the hotel bed. But the twinkle in a pair of green and a pair of brown eyes tells me that their minds added it anyway. And even he is at the same time finishing another cheeseburger, his French fries and two slices of apple pie, it’s mostly Lan (‘Orlando’ as he finally introduces himself) who asks question after curious question. 

When I return the favour however and ask where they’re headed, it’s Sean who answers. “Home”, he states simply.

Not really an earth shattering revelation, I’d have thought (after all, half of your journeys take you home, don’t they?). But Orlando turns his head and beams at the blond, white teeth and dimples on his cheeks. 

“Sean,” he says equally simply. But in that short name, there’s amusement and affirmation, affection and quite a lot of the ‘I do’ my husband and I exchanged a few days back.

The older man responds with a smile, different from the previous ones in its quiet confidence, and their eyes lock in a wordless exchange, more eloquent than any conversation could ever be. 

The spell doesn’t last long, though. Orlando slurps from his Coke and then catches the straw between his teeth and flicks the sole droplet of liquid still clinging to its end at Sean.

'Passengers for LIAT flight LI 383 bound for St Vincent and the Grenadines due to depart at 15.30 may now board at Gate 1.'

Sean laughs and steals the straw from Orlando’s lips only to flick it at him the next moment while getting up from his seat. Orlando mock-growls at him and does likewise.

'Flight LI 383 bound for St Vincent and the Grenadines now boarding at Gate 1.'

“Your flight seems to be on time at least,” I say maybe with a little bit of envy in my voice.

“Yeah,” Orlando replies and stops in front of our table. “Last one in quite a row though.”

“Thank Christ,” Sean murmurs gruffly but gives me a friendly even if weary smile as he steps around their table. “Have a nice honeymoon, love.”

“Thank you,” I say, just barely swallow a ‘you too’. “I hope you have a good time in the sun.”

“Mmm, sun,” Orlando hums and momentarily closes his eyes, lost in rapture. Sean shakes his head fondly, lightly touches the small of Lan’s back. “C’mon or we’ll miss the damn thing.”

Orlando winks at me and lets himself be pushed forward toward the exit. I watch their departure and am pretty sure there’s that goofy smile on my face again. 

In front of me, my husband stirs and abruptly wakes. He jerks up and blinks at me sleepily. His dark hair sticks out in odd angles and the weaving pattern of his pullover is imprinted into his cheek. He couldn’t look any lovelier. He smiles at me lazily, reaches out for my hand and when he speaks his voice is still sleep roughened. 

“Love you, beautiful.”

 

****

**2004**

On Monday, after a long day’s work and a quick shower, Orlando comes into the living room wearing only a white towel around his waist. He trusts the flimsy cotton to cling to his dark and still damp skin and shovels cereal into his mouth, all slurping and crunching as he flops onto the couch. Catching Sean looking at him from behind his easel he holds up his bowl in a silent question but the artist shakes his head.

Sean returns to the canvas and runs the fingertips of his right hand over the clean white material, feeling damp cotton and hot skin, blue strokes caressing dark brown, and starts to mix colours. One of his favourite brushes lies lightly in his hand soaking up glistening ocean blue when his eyes find Orlando again. 

Sometimes he thinks he can paint without even looking at the canvas, the brush, his hand and sometimes painting is almost painful in its self inflicted abstinence when he could be touching Orlando instead.

Orlando has fallen asleep on the couch, lithe but now slightly bulkier body stretched out so that his face can catch the rays of warm sunlight coming through the window. He’s drawn both of his arms behind his head, his face nuzzled against his biceps in his slumber. He’s bend his left knee, rests it against the upholstery of the couch, and it has caused the already too small towel to bunch up even further. It still covers his soft cock but nevertheless Sean can make it out underneath the thin material; the outer rim just barely stretches over Orlando’s balls before it slips between his parted legs. The towel’s white colour accentuates his tan, even there on his naked inner thigh, dusted with tiny dark hairs. 

Sean thinks of Greek sculptures and of sex, watches Orlando’s flat belly tremble lightly with each intake of breath. When Sean inhales after an endless moment of nothing but this, the heavy scent of his acrylic paint seeps into his lungs, his fingers tighten around the worn handle of the brush. Then he starts to paint.

 

On Tuesday Orlando leaves at the crack of dawn ‘just to get some fresh air’. Sean doesn’t really remember him saying that when he wakes around noon but the keys for Orlando’s motorbike are gone. 

Sean lets Sidi out and spends the day with gesso and modeling paste and mortar. He spoils another kitchen knife irreversibly with it and has gritty sand redefining his fingerprints, too. He thinks about Orlando and his liking for speed and twisting roads when his brushes follow the curves of artificially created landscapes on his canvas.

When Orlando returns with a plastic bag with goods from some market, they sit in twilight, two pairs of naked feet dangling from the heightened porch. Orlando tells him about the ludicrous people he’s met today, and as per usual Sean is not certain how many of the stories are true. But it doesn’t matter to him, it never does. He listens and smiles and laughs and eats pickled black olives.

 

On Wednesday Sean is in an extraordinarily foul mood because he has an appointment with some gallery owner in the afternoon. He hates those, hates any meeting to which he has to show up on time and dressed in more than his ratty sweatpants – or so says Orlando.

Sean doesn’t get any work done during the day which makes him all the more irritated and he stalls for such a long time that Orlando has to drive him to town to drop off him and Sidi before he returns to work. The younger man listens to him grumble and complain on the ride. He finally interrupts him by blindly patting his cheek and saying in a mocking patronizing tone, “You just gotta suck it up, bitch.”

Sean blinks and for a moment asks himself what it says about him that he’s truly, madly, deeply besotted with someone who calls him ‘bitch’ on a regular basis. Then he switches the radio station from Orlando’s favourite Rock to Berber music just to piss him off. He’s sold five paintings an hour later and he and Sidi pick up some groceries.

In the evening Orlando’s lips lightly touch his naked shoulder as he tells Sean that he wants to make love to the freckles there. Sean’s chuckle of amusement turns into quiet moans and hitched breaths when Orlando starts licking.

 

On Thursday Sean finds Orlando dozing in the hammock in late afternoon heat. He toys with the brush in his hand and can’t resist. 

Orlando wakes, belatedly, and finds a very graphic sketch of two shagging stick figures adorning his chest. The look on his face has Sean laughing until he cries. Orlando hauls himself at him, tackles him to the ground and uses way too much of Sean’s Windsor & Newton sap green and rose to pay him back in kind. 

They end up looking like crazed jungle warriors, grass soft against their naked backs, and their bellies hurt from laughing so hard.

 

On Friday a dull shattering noise disturbs Sean in his sleep. But it is the loud cussing which comes right after that wakes him up properly. He follows the stream of obscenities out of the house, sleepily scratching his crotch as he steps out onto the porch. There he finds Orlando on his knees, picking up pieces of a broken shingle. “There’s coffee”, he says and weighs one shard in his hand.

Sean potters about in the kitchen and picks stripes of dried blue paint from the back of his hand while waiting for his coffee to heat up. When he walks out again, Sidi sits on the lawn, his head tilted to the side and his brow furrowed in a doggie scowl, and he stares intently at the roof onto which his younger master has climbed. 

Orlando spends half the day mending the roof and Sean, who isn’t much for heights, hands him various tools as well as bits and pieces of food that pass for brekkies and lunch in their household.

Sean drags out one of the cheap deckchairs as well as his sports paper, and Sidi gets dog snot over the premiere league stats, curious pup that he is. Sean explains the system of the UEFA draw to him and promptly the dog falls asleep on his thighs. 

When he looks up from the paper Orlando is still on the roof. He’s not working though, but has just pulled his sweaty t-shirt over his head and now merely stands there, one hand in the pocket of his slacks and stance wide for balance. Just looking down at Sean. 

Sean squints into the sun that highlights Orlando’s long long legs and slender body but still is no match for his smile. And for a moment Sean feels like he’s worshipping an ancient God of the sun in casual clothes. And for a moment his breath catches in his throat ‘cause it’d be the kind of worship that might just burn you alive. 

Then Orlando wipes his face with his t-shirt before he tosses it down at Sean, hitting him right in the head with it. Sean huffs and drags it off. But he breathes in Orlando’s fresh sweat and hears Orlando’s cackle and the taptapping of boots on the roof before he continues to read. 

 

Sean thinks he might drown. He’s been painting since the early light of this Saturday’s dawn. And while there are cracks and hints of brown around it that mingle with cerulean, the almost black indanthrene blue in the middle is pure enough to lure him like a maelstrom. He can’t stop staring but doesn’t feel pride because his own art holds him captive, draws him under and won’t let him reach the surface. The still damp paint shimmers wetly in the afternoon light, taunting, majestic, unfinished.

When Orlando steps up beside him, Sean doesn’t avert his gaze from the canvas but feels his lover’s hand slide down the small of his back over his ass to rest right below its curve. He flicks his brush between index and middle finger, helpless restlessness despite the comforting touch. He might lose himself in the unfinished infinity of that blue vortex. Beautiful but tenaciously silent in what it wants from him. 

Orlando’s hand slides a little lower as the younger man sits back on his heels right next to him, well known fingers pushing between Sean’s thighs along the jeans’ seam. The artist blinks slowly for the first time in a long time, the younger man leans his temple against his leg and Sean knows Orlando is looking at the painting and waiting for him to do something. 

Only when his lover presses a cheek against his crotch Sean realizes that he is hard, might have been hard for quite a while. Orlando nuzzles his cock through his jeans with silent but persistent want that nimble fingers know how to answer to as they make quick work of Sean’s fly.

Orlando’s eyes aren’t indanthrene blue but they might as well be because Sean is just as enthralled. They look at him with lust, almost childlike wonderment, ruthlessness; they keep looking up at him when Orlando starts licking him. Wet strokes of his tongue glisten to match the milky smear of precome on his cheek. And Sean can’t do anything but stare when Orlando takes him into his mouth, curved lips stretching around hard flesh. He almost cracks the brush’s handle when Orlando swallows him down, pushes it, keeps it there. Looks up at him.

With something like wonderment or reverence maybe, the artist watches his own paint smeared fingers weave into thick brown curls as they hold him still. Orlando’s nose is so close to Sean’s skin that he should feel him exhale but he doesn’t. Dimly he is aware that Orlando can’t breathe, that he is too much, that it’s him who has to loosen his grip. But Orlando growls deep in his throat, fingers digging into the backs of the artist’s thighs when his hand attempts to shift. Sean understands ‘cause this - them- is where he always feels capable, worthy.

“Yours,” he affirms tenderly, hunched over, cradles Orlando’s head in both of his hands. It’s only then that Orlando lets him pull back enough to suck in air before he leisurely brings both of them off.

Later, it’s two broad strokes of perinone orange that do the trick.

 

On Sunday Sean wakes up to find Orlando still in bed with him, velvety snores soft against the back of his neck. Orlando’s left arm has snaked under his own to wrap around him and clutches his left shoulder possessively. Sean’s baby kisses, close mouthed and soft against his lover’s wrist and lower arm, make him stir. He pulls the artist tighter against his warm chest and belly, awakening cock, strong naked thighs and he murmurs, “Not going anywhere.” 

Sean doesn’t and they spend the day in bed.

 

On Monday, after a long day’s work and a quick shower, Orlando comes into the living room only wearing a white towel around his waist. His skin is still damp and some of the thicker drops of water seep through Sean’s simple t-shirt as Orlando presses against him and tries to force feed him some of his cereal.

****

**1995, April**

The asphalt is hot under Orlando’s bare feet, his sneakers dangle from his shoulder, their laces tied together. The sand is a different kind of hot, soft under his soles and scratchy on his feet’s back and it even smells like warmth and idleness, mixed with the rich salty tang of the ocean. He inhales deeply, can only think of a few things better, one of them is the acid smell of paint solvent on Sean’s hands.

He takes a short cut over a couple of dunes, and now look, there it is – the roof of the caravan and the kinda tacky striped sunblind to its right. With the sun in his back, he doesn’t have to squint behind his shades and still can see Sean moving about. He’s wearing the same shirt and shorts he’s slept in, only now they’re grazed with fresh stains of acrylic paint, the same colours that adorn the canvas he’s working on in the shadow of the marquis.

The caravan is ancient, the white paint comes off in chips and it’s freakishly torrid inside during the day. But Sean paints outside anyway and Orlando prefers lazing about in the sun to any other pastime, so it doesn’t really matter. Like every time when he comes home, he wonders how the actual owner of the thing managed to drag it out here. Well, that’s not true, he doesn’t really wonder. See, he and Sean have a couple of theories regarding that. The caravan might be a stranded whale in disguise. It might have blossomed out of sawn out jetsam. 

“Maybe, maybe it’s the modern day’s version of Noah’s arch, though,” Orlando says as he reaches it. He pats the worn and weathersoftened surface gently and then carelessly flings his sneakers through the open door. 

“What’d that make us?” Sean asks over his shoulder and absentmindedly scratches his sweaty cheek with the end of his brush, his fingers tainted with blue and green paint.

“One of a kind. Well, actually two.” Orlando sits down on the middle of the three steps leading up to the trailer and sighs happily. “Either way, we’re special.”

“You certainly are,” Sean says with enough teasing irony in his voice to get away with it. But still Orlando knows that the artist is looking at him like that. Like that. You know, the kind of look that sends a hot shiver over his shoulder blades and he wants to purr in response when it smoothes down between them, down his spine to pool in the small of his back. And the sun is scorching and Orlando is sweating.

“This looks like a bloody bird,” Sean says when his gaze returns to the canvas. There is amused irritation in his dark rumble now. 

Sean doesn’t like anything symmetrical, Orlando thinks as he looks at the canvas the painter has been working on. It’s a medium one and just barely fits onto the easel, pushing its three wooden legs deeper into the sand with its weight. It does look like a bird of some sort.

“Bugger,” Sean mutters without much heat, stuffs the brush into the side pocket of his shorts and wraps his arms around himself contemplatively. “How was your day?” he asks, half turned to Orlando and his green eyes regarding him curiously.

“I sold about a gazillion of the flowery bikinis,” Orlando says, “mostly to people who will not fit into them very well. It’s a tragedy.” 

Sean abandons the painting for the moment and comes over. His solid frame shadows Orlando from the rays of the sun. “So quit, become a surfing pro”, he says.

“I’d kick ass, man,” Orlando replies and half smiles, half yawns. 

Sean gently rubs the miraculously paint free knuckles of his right hand against Orlando’s cheek in a gesture that might say ‘Totally’ or ‘If wishes were horses’. 

Then he disappears into the caravan. The broad strokes on the canvas glisten in the shadow and Orlando likes the colours Sean has chosen even if the motive is a little odd. They look careless and refreshing, a bit like the cold and damp glass of the beer bottle feels when it’s pushed into his hand now. Sean takes his own back to the easel and resumes working. Orlando sips the cold liquid and watches.

The artist lifts the picture’s wooden frame from the easel and the canvas, heavy with wet paint, ripples like the water’s surface. He rotates it ninety degrees, puts it back down. Smashes his entire right hand into the pool of blue paint on the palette, even coops up some of it with curled fingers and smears it over the painting’s upper half.

“There, that’s much more like it,” Sean says and sounds a bit like the proverbial cat with the canary. He doesn’t like symmetry, not really, and accidental concreteness even less. So, Orlando knows this really pleases him, even if the canvas might be ruined and he’s lost a week’s work just like that. It doesn’t feel like it, though, not when Sean’s sporting a wide grin as he continues to paint. 

The sun is hot and Orlando’s mind is sorta drifting.

He thinks that he likes the way Sean’s vowels sound when he’s excited about something. When he draws them out and turns most of them into diphthongs. He likes to watch Sean eat – cherries or, God, strawberries. The way he always bites them in half and sucks lightly on the ripe dark red flesh before popping them into his mouth, his lips reddened from their juice. It is sexy in Orlando’s eyes when Sean stands in front of the easel and strokes his own upper arm absentmindedly, tiny blond hairs standing up. 

Sean rubs his smeary hands on the back of his shorts before his shoulders relax again, confidence in his posture, and he twirls a large brush between his fingers. “Just what it needed,” he says. Orlando glances down at himself, familiar bulge in his cameos. 

It’s alright to have a hard on when they’re kissing, when somehow he wakes up mostly on top of Sean in the morning. It’s, like, physically inevitable and feels right – and later on way better than just ‘right’, too, y’know. But thing is, it’s not just when they’re kissing, or when they’re touching, it happens not only when his mind is already foggy and has difficulties to concentrate on anything but the closeness of Sean. It happens when he’s merely listening to him, just watching him, when he’s thinking about him. Which is practically all the time. 

“Hey, still awake?” Sean asks quietly but his touch on Orlando’s knee makes him twitch in slight surprise. His eyes snap open and he finds Sean crouching down in front of him. Sean’s hand is still resting loosely on his knee and however innocent the touch is intended, Orlando can feel its weight, can feel the cracks of paint, the warmth of Sean’s body and it makes his heart thunder, his breath catch fire in his throat.

“Sure,” he replies, his voice only a little wavery. He pushes his shades up onto his curls and squints because of the sun or maybe because of Sean’s smile. 

“Wanna go for a swim?” Sean asks, his fingers lightly circling on Orlando’s naked calf, their tips brushing against the rim of his shorts. Orlando stares down at them, blue and green bright against his dark tan, and swallows hard. Wants its touch so damn much, wants it against him, around, inside, holding him, stroking him, pleasing him, wants to lick it, thrust into it. 

He blinks. “Huh?”

For a second Sean’s grip on his thigh tightens a little, it’s like he is instinctively reacting to something Orlando himself doesn’t even have words for. But then he grins and gets back to his feet.

“I’ll get the water wings,” he says jokingly. When he climbs the steps next to him, Orlando can’t help but stare at his naked calves, muscles flexing under golden skin.

***

“Sit down, hold on to your beer and prepare to be dazzled. Cause I had the most amazing day of my life. Well, definitely in the top five anyway. You remember Marc, the bloke I taught cussing in British? He and his brother Callie own a boat and they do these island tours for tourists, you know? So, apparently Marc thinks he owes me for all the ‘bollocks’ and ‘bugger’ and stuff, so he took me with them. 

Sean, the ocean. So fucking awesome. That feeling of the waves under the boat and you feel the salt on your skin and in your lungs and – well, Marc laughed at me, too, but hey, he gets that every day, it’s not like it’s new to him, right? 

Anyway, we moored at Canouan and Callie took the tourists with him for shore leave. Normally, some stay with Marc and he gives them a crash course in diving – but today they were a bunch of rather horizontally challenged Americans and Marc said they’d probably attract hungry sharks. So, the moment they were gone he offered to show me. How to dive, that is. Good thing I didn’t tell him that I nearly killed myself with my board when I started surfing. Oh, shut up, you.

Man, I can’t tell you how fantastic it was. The fish we saw – fucking amazing. Absolutely tiny sea horses and wrasses in about every colour you can think of, zig zagging around us. I think you’d have liked the frog fish best, though, he was bright uhm, cadmium red, yeah? And his mouth was shaped like this – oi, stop laughing, I’m serious, he did look like he was miffed! 

God, and there were, like, these massive volcanic rocks and the coral has grown over them and all kinds of other things too, gorgonians and these yellow sponges that look like huge underwater clouds. It’s like being in a three dimensional painting or a moving sculpture, you know? 

Seriously, it was completely surreal ‘cause I couldn’t hear a thing besides my own blood and my breathing and all I did was in slow motion. But you know what, I didn’t feel clumsy or anything, it’s just too – man I haven’t done anything like it before. Can’t wait to do it again, you have to come next time. Promise me?”

***

Orlando returns from town late sometimes. Somewhere spring break must’ve started because the streets were packed with people until well after sundown, chattering and laughter like the glow of yellow lampions against the dark blue sky. So, he’s been to the bars near the beach with a few of his new mates, and flirting some and drinking some is just like riding the bike – only that he never really consciously learned either of the first two.

He’s still a bit buzzed when he reaches the caravan. And he supposes he has to be glad that it’s close to full moon because otherwise it’s so dark and quiet, such a difference. He toes off his sneakers before he climbs the little staircase that leads up to the ever open door and is quiet enough not to wake Sean. 

Even in semi darkness the interior of the caravan is rather hideous – they added their own kind of mess to the cramped space and the questionable furnishing. Still, Orlando suddenly feels like he’s underdressed or at least like he needs to change into something that doesn’t smell of booze and beach and other people’s sun lotion. He pulls his shirt over his head and tiptoes to the sofa bed on the left, over which painting equipment, surfing gear and clothes are scattered. He sniffs the shirts he picks up and feels an odd sort of relief when he finds something clean, even if quite crumpled. 

“What are you doing?” Sean asks, his voice low and sleepy. But when Orlando turns around he finds him looking at him from the double bed on the other end of the caravan. He lies on his back but has his head turned towards Orlando, his eyes focused on his bare chest. Orlando feels naked. And a bit embarrassed and a bit encouraged.

“Sorry I woke you,” he says, not really answering the question, but doesn’t pull the fresh shirt on, just slips into bed next to Sean. “Didn’t mean to. Had a good dream?”

When he has stopped shifting and settles on his side, facing Sean, he feels the artist’s hand on his hip, just resting there. “Yeah,” Sean replies belatedly when his eyes have drifted shut again. Orlando huffs in surprise and apology because usually Sean says he doesn’t dream, or at least he doesn’t remember. “You had a good night?”

Orlando shrugs noncommittally and figures Sean can feel the motion even if he doesn’t see it. “What did you dream of?” he asks.

A little smile curls Sean’s lips at the one word he says. “You.” And it’s not that Sean’d dream of him and tell him about it without even a second of hesitation. It’s that smile that gets Orlando wide awake and, God, aroused instantly. He feels a little stupid because it’s just a smile after all, isn’t it? Doesn’t, shouldn’t mean anything like that, shouldn’t make him ache, but it does. 

Orlando’s not sure whether Sean’s drifting off again. Maybe he is. The gentle circling stroking of his thumb against Orlando’s hipbone stops and his features, already relaxed from the smile, soften even further.

Sometimes, Orlando lies awake next to him and really, he doesn’t want to disturb his sleep. So, when he leans a little closer, he does it oh-so-carefully, like, he tilts his head so that his nose is almost but not yet brushing against Sean’s shoulder and he can smell him with each intake of air. His breathing is in sync with Sean’s then, deep and slow and steady. 

Sometimes, this isn’t enough. 

The cheap bed creaks a little when Orlando shifts onto his back and Sean’s hand drops from his hip right next to it, its back resting lightly against Orlando’s skin. The rustling of the thin blanket seems loud in his ears when he draws his own hand underneath. He can feel his fingers tremble against his belly, feels the faintest vibration when they brush over the beginning of his pubic hair, sliding downwards. He’s half hard already, and the familiar curl of his hand around his cock feels so good and necessary. 

He lets his eyes drift shut and thinks about how Sean’s breathing changes when he’s aroused. How it becomes harder, more ragged, on the verge of a continuous growl even when he tries to be all quiet like. 

His grip around himself tightens and the additional pressure sends a jolt of pleasure coursing through his body, so intense he’s sure Sean must’ve felt it as well where their bodies touch. The unconscious and innocent contact, Sean’s relaxed hand against his hip, is sweet torture, forces him to stay as still as possible to not wake him but reminds him of Sean’s presence, of his heat and weight and power over him every second, every stroke of his own hand. 

He bites back a moan and fights the urge to arch his back, to thrust into his tight fist. It would wake Sean, surely, and he’d take one look at Orlando’s sweaty skin, he’d hear the thunder of Orlando’s pulse and he’d know. Know that Orlando is jerking off right next to him, thinking about him. 

A quiet whimper escapes his lips as he imagines green eyes regarding him, sees the flash of realization in them, feels their hungry gaze still lingering, wanting to watch, to witness. He spills hot seed into his fist, comes with a soundless gasp, and holds his breath as the universe rushes back to him and around him in stars that dance on the low ceiling. He finally exhales shakily, the quivering helpless stutter to it so different from Sean’s even breathing next to him.

His palm is slick with come and again, the obscene sliding sound when he lets go of his spent cock seems loud and all too telling. He pulls a face and with his clean hand he reaches over himself blindly, searching and finding his abandoned t-shirt to wipe himself off. 

His skin is still hot and pleasantly sensitive and he allows himself to sigh contentedly when he curls up. After a moment, Sean settles behind him, a heavy arm over his side that pulls him close. “Cadmiumred,” he exhales and nuzzles Orlando’s naked shoulder. His soft snores feel even better than the faint whorl of night air.

***

“St. Vincent? Cloud number nine material, if they have hammocks up there as well. The water is awesome, and man, the food, don’t get me started on the food. That restaurant next to the gallery where you sold the blue’n’green one? To die for. Paradise, that’s what it is. And you know what? There needs to be a parrot. His name’ll be Barney and it’ll sit on your shoulder while you paint, like right now, and he’ll say sophisticated things like, “Oh, art-orgasm, oooh” all day. I’m totally serious. He can be mates with Petal, the African elephant I plan to get for your birthday. Or is it the Indian ones that are trainable? Which ones have the big ears?” 

***

“Honestly, most of the time I have no frigging idea what Joseph is trying to tell me.” Orlando laughs so hard that he’s having difficulties to speak. “I only nod a lot and try to imitate whatever he’s doing.”

“Right,” Sean says, a big grin on his lips. He twirls his football on his right index before catching it again.

“I’m telling you, it’s his fault that the cash register is broken!” Orlando insists and he almost really is a bit pissed off about it, too, after a long day of mental math in the shop from which only Sean’s arrival has saved him.

Sean halts, ball under his left arm, and the mild evening breeze blows strands of his hair into his face. It’s hard to say what’s going on in his head when he paints, maybe he sees the world two dimensional, no, in colours, shapes, contrasts and harmonies. Orlando has climbed the dune next to him and stretches his arms out to catch the breeze and sees the change in Sean’s, in the artist’s expression. 

The silvery shimmer of the sand, the creamy purple of the sky and the peach coloured clouds around them would add up to a pretty little aquarelle, like the ones they got in the arts and crafts shops. Only that Sean’s never interested in anything like it. And besides, the huge human skull on Orlando’s Harley Davidson t-shirt would prolly fuck up the quaint idyll anyhow. 

“What?” Orlando asks, grins and shrugs. The football is kicked in his direction instead of a response and he catches it with ease, plays keepie uppie while Sean comes up next to him.

“Joseph told me,” Sean says when he’s reached him, “that he wasn’t even in the room when the cash register went bust. He was hiring out the motor boat.”

Orlando gapes at him. “You understood him?” 

Sean smirks, throws his arms in the air, then waves them frantically. “Lanlanlanlan,” he chants with a thick accent, a perfect imitation of the shop owner’s heavy Vincentian one, rolls his eyes dramatically, then points at Orlando. “Lan.” 

Orlando huffs and throws the football back at Sean, hitting him in the chest with it. Sean’s arms close around it reflexively and he winces at the impact.

“Wuss,” Orlando says, affectionately though. “Race you to the ocean.” 

And off he goes, which is not really cheating. ‘cause he loses precious metres anyway when he can’t stop laughing and almost gets tangled up in his own shirt and keeps looking over his shoulder. Sean has dropped the ball and somehow manages to get his shirt over his head and gain on him at the same time. When Orlando reaches the shallow water Sean catches up with him and tackles him. They both go under. 

Hands scramble for purchase in the silky slick sand underneath and push them up and they resurface at the same time. They laugh open mouthed and right then a wave breaks over their heads. Orlando almost swallows a good deal of the North Atlantic and when he manages to get his head above water level again, he gapes for air. 

But only for a moment because Sean’s so close and he’s wet and half naked and Orlando can feel him close. He can’t really do anything against it, doesn’t want to either. Sand whirls up and water and Orlando’s senses when he straddles him, they go under again. He presses his chest against Sean’s, his mouth onto Sean’s, anchoring himself, sharing much needed air in a mockery of the kiss of life.

It’s perfect for a second. Like they’re suspended in time and space. Then Orlando gets water up his nose and they both scramble and resurface, coughing. Sean splutters and laughs and tries to blink salt water and his soaked hair out of his eyes. Orlando sits back on his heels, swaying slightly as shallow ripples of the waves move against his lower belly.

“Sometimes, I don’t think I could ever -“ he starts abruptly but so quietly that his words barely carry over the rush of the ocean. “You’re my –“ 

He doesn’t finish, his words seem to shy away mid sentence, coming on almost too strong only to retreat the next instant. Just like he’s not touching Sean right now and that seems just wrong. He just stares at Sean, breathes heavily, from the exhaustion maybe, doesn’t move or talk. 

He knows there are days in which Sean’d go insane if he couldn’t paint, when he might lose his mind without the pure physicality of it, of breathing the paint and the solvent, of feeling the smooth canvas, the worn brush, the slick paint, of using his hands for what they were created for. Days like these the colours and forms, the results don’t even matter but he still feels satisfied and spend afterwards.

For Orlando, it’s just not art he wants to smell and taste and touch.

Somehow, like always, Sean does the only sensible thing. He raises his hand just below the surface, and with a flick of his wrist he splashes water in Orlando’s direction. Orlando blinks as the drops gliding down his chest prompt him. Then he grabs a handful of dripping sand and throws it at Sean, hitting his left shoulder, and laughs.

****

**2013**

How do you describe the feeling of sand between your toes? The taste of salt in the air, the warmth of the sun on your back? To what can you compare the sound of the waves, the reflection of the water, the motion of the spray? If the sea herself is the godmother of all art, could you find any shapes, any colours to capture her? Are there even any? Should there be?

How comes you can’t even decide whether you like what you see? Does the endless horizon amaze or intimidate you? Or is it something in between, even less expressionable, that coaxes, forces, brings you to just sit here and stare?

How many men have wanted to tame these waters, or to become one with their infinity? How many artists have tried to express how the ocean makes them feel?

Is it compassion rising inside you, or is it pity?

He, he loves the ocean the same way he loves everything else. It’s a day well spent, if he spends it surfing, or diving, or smashing himself against huge breakers. He tells you tales of Poseidon and Odysseus as bedtime stories and he pees into the warm water, of course he does. He’d love being a merman, or a pirate, or just naked on the beach, ‘’cause there really need to be more nude beaches, man’. He enjoys watching fish about as much as eating them, spends mute days on cutters, and sways when in the evening his feet touch solid ground again. And when the sun’s reflection on the water has burned him yet again, he bitches profusely before he’s off sailing, or swimming or splashing once more.

He loves the sea with the same uncomplicated intensity with which he loves life, loves you. 

He has heard of J.M.W. Turner, and Hemingway and Demetrios, eldest son of your neighbour who died at sea. It doesn’t change anything, because what do they have to do with him. He still tosses washed up kelp at you and merrily stomps onto your sketches in wet sand to get you to come swimming with him already.

Two decades ago, on another beach, he told you he fell for the sea, and asked you if that sounded silly. You know it does, and still it makes you feel a stupid sort of reverence. Because he can love without second guessing, without losing himself. He can look at the ocean, your paintings, can look at you, and sees things that should scare him, but he never is frightened. He sees the mercilessness, the fury, the darkness and dedication and doubt, and never feels the need to prove his unquestionable understanding. He knows, and that’s enough.

His love is as steadfast and everchanging as the sea. It might be as dangerous, too, you’re sure he can be anything he wants. He’s definitely dorkier and more imperfect. And every day you think he couldn’t amaze you more. And each day you’re gladly proven wrong.

He buys you British beer in the middle of nowhere, and stubbornly supports the wrong football team. He sweats when he dances, and snorts wine through his nose when you kiss his ticklish feet. He collects nicknacks from places you’ve been to, and sometimes he misses England. He has the most unreadable handwriting, knows how to cuss fluently in a dozen different languages, and sings Stones’ songs when he hoovers. He charms pass port controllers, and steals hotel towels. He touches your finished pictures with careful fingers, and nuzzles your paint splattered hands before dozing off.

To name everything that is to know about him, all you already know, is as impossible as putting the sea in between the confinements of a frame. Does this endless number of reasons why you adore him sometimes (only sometimes) intimidate you? Your answer is simple – No. Never.

****

**2003**

Whatever Sean owns eventually ends up being Orlando’s. Only once there seems to be an exception to this rule and that is sort of a surprise.

It’s not the big, indefinable metaphors – his heart, his soul, or anything. They have always belonged to Lan, even though it is kinda hard keeping track of that, even if you are slightly more into the big picture stuff than Sean is. 

It’s not stuff like his scoop and palette. Orlando ‘finds’ and uses them to fix the hole in the backdoor where he suspects rats could come in at night. Sean co-opts a kitchen knife and a dog eared, large-print whodunnit – at least until Orlando discovers a liking for grumpy Scottish DCIs. 

It isn’t things like Sean’s t-shirts or his socks. He keeps his clothes lying around everywhere and sooner rather than later, they end up with Orlando, in his drawer, on his body. It’s usually then and then only that Sean notices the color of a faded Blades shirt or the structure of one woolen sock warming Orlando’s cold right foot. 

It’s not about, say, Sean doodling star constellations onto napkins when he’s bored. Because Orlando ends up with a sun tattoo over his hipbone.

So, there is only ever been one exception to this rule, and it has big paws and a wet tongue.

They have been here for a few weeks only and Sean’s mind is in that state where all the new forms and shapes around them still are too tied to architectural designs, to historical significance and Moroccan sight seeing brochures. Yeah, pretty and all, and Sean doesn’t mind wandering through the souks, eating nougat and getting conned into buying zillji tiles. He just can’t paint yet. So he lazes around at the Atlantic or sits on their ratty couch and does nude sketches of Orlando.

There is some noise at the front door, but Sean is currently too engrossed in getting the shape of Lan’s collar bone right to pay it much attention. It’s only when Orlando calls out for him to get the door that Sean pushes the pencil behind his ear, and does as he’s asked. 

Opening the door he is faced with a slightly puzzled Orlando whose face lightens up fractionally at the sight of Sean. But when he attempts to move towards him, there is a distinct growling sound coming from between them. Sean looks down at the doormat.

“What did you bring a dog for?” he asks and is tempted to poke the black puppy with his toe for emphasis. Would’ve done it probably if said animal weren’t still growling.

“I didn’t,” Orlando holds up his hands in a gesture of pure innocence. “It was there when I arrived. The stupid mutt won’t let me through.”

The dog responds to the slightly accusing tone of voice by growling a little louder before it turns around once more to face Sean and wag at him, looking for approval. It is pitch black and about the size of a fox, huge paws indicating it is not done growing yet. Its large ears lop down just like its pink tongue that is lolling out. The tail is still thumping steadily onto the checkerboard doormat and the pup looks up at Sean adoringly. Sean scratches his head, purses his mouth and steps between the dog and Lan.

“Must’ve followed me from the beach,” he says as Orlando walks past him. To the pup he mouths, “Shoo now.” And if a dog could pout, this one would have its lower lip stuck out like nobody’s business. 

He hears Orlando snickering with something like malicious joy, closes the door and goes back to shapes of collarbones and lingering Arabic Geometry.

But, of course, that is not the end of it. After all, everybody knows that dogs pick you and not the other way round. And they have good reasons for their choices as well. There is a right pace when you walk along the shoreline and find a dog tagging along. There’s the bemused muttering in a low voice, a tentative hand fondling a still slightly oversized head. It’s the way you smell or hunch your shoulders just so when leaning down to them. Or something.

The dog is sneaky. Half the times Sean doesn’t even notice he is being followed until half way back to the house. But when he looks down at his side then, the mutt prances there, head held high, like there was a leash connecting the two of them for everyone to see. Sean has tried to get rid of it a few times, but apparently the dog doesn’t even get bored waiting for him looking at postcards for fifteen minutes straight, and Sean surely isn’t gonna try outrunning an overly eager young canine in the streets of Essaouira.

As for Orlando?

“Look who’s back. The hellhound.”

Sean glances up from the chipped dinner plate currently covered in splotches of yellow. Orlando, on the couch, ties back his hair with a rubber band and nods towards the veranda door. The black dog lies in the shadow of an olive tree, its head resting on its paws and its eyes fixed on Sean.

“It’s probably waiting for a handout”, Sean says and smears diarylide into lemon with his index. He isn’t sure about the resulting colour though, maybe it is – 

“It is waiting for something to chew on alright. Namely, my throat.”

“It’s not big enough to reach it. Yet.”

Orlando gets up, oddly restless today, never mind the hours he’s worked on the construction site. He grins when he glances at Sean’s outstretched, yellow finger and brushes past him on the way to the kitchen. Sean has decided to skip the colour mixing and squishes paint directly from the tube onto the canvas when Lan reappears.

Sean really isn’t a dog person; for instance, he didn’t even know that dogs liked dates. Before he shared a bag of them with the mutt the other day, that is. But maybe this dog just isn’t normal.

Orlando steps out onto the veranda, his movements slow and careful and coaxing – really everything Sean would fall for, even though he adores the bouncing and stumbling and loafing that Orlando usually does just as much.

The dog isn’t as easy a prey as Sean though. It doesn’t move from its spot in the shade when Orlando approaches, doesn’t show its fangs when he crouches down in front of it. But it merely eyes the rolled up slice of cold meat in the human’s hand skeptically, not interested in the peace offering at all.

Orlando waggles the meat a little and Sean can hear him make soft cooing noises. All of a sudden, the dog snags the treat out of his hand and gulps it down without bothering to chew properly. Sean is surprised and a little impressed that, even though its mouth is full with bribery, the mutt still manages to snarl rather impressively at the donor.

“Oh, I hate you, too,” Orlando mutters and slumps down in the yellowish grass right there, frustration on his face. The dog sniffs, gets up, gives him a wide berth, and strolls through the veranda door like it’s always been at home in their house. Its butt has barely hit the carpet at Sean’s side when the artist grabs it by the neck and puts it back outside. The puppy huffs dramatically and there is yellow paint smeared onto the black fur now.

“Lan, did you just stick out your tongue at the dog?”

Aside from sniffing Sean out anywhere, the mutt’s sense of direction isn’t really worth very much. Or maybe it is, and it just doesn’t care if they get lost in the Souks as long as it’s still at Sean’s side. Whichever way it is, the dog happily smells at buckets of spices and doesn’t make any attempt of showing him the way out of this maze. Sean frowns and tries to remember whether he’s come across the butcher stall with the grotesque stuffed bull’s head already.

The familiar grip of Orlando’s hand closes over his shoulder, pressing the soft linen of his shirt into his heated skin. He turns around to find Orlando grinning at him around a mouthful of – well, he supposes it’s some sort of sausage. 

The other half of it still is in Orlando’s free hand and with it he gestures left, away from the paprika, sesame and coriander towards yet another alley of pottery and fabrics and copperware that looks just the same to Sean. Orlando, however, knows this market like the back of his hand already - ’left of where they sell the hideous black scorpions, right behind the one toothed woman with the shishas’ - and Sean relaxes. He looks down at the dog whose tail is brushing against his shin. 

“Shoulda been your job, little bugger.” 

The dog sits back on its haunches and licks its flews. Orlando offers it the rest of his sausage but for a long moment it just keeps staring up at Sean, ignoring him completely. Sean’s small smile is the counterpart to Orlando’s exasperated sigh, when eventually the dog degrades himself to take the treat after all.

“Sid’s prolly gonna claim being a veg next,” Orlando muses as they walk on.

“Who?” Sean automatically looks around but there are only bright fake smiles of salesmen amongst equally cheerful fabrics, no one they know.

“Sid,” Orlando repeats. “Sid Vicious, your psycho stalker dog.”

The puppy darts off towards another enticing smell, bounces back, and merrily takes its place at Sean’s side again. When it stretches its neck, Sean can reach its head for a pat without having to lean down too much now. The dog yips happily at the attention. 

“You’re not jealous of a mutt, are you?”

“Pfft . ‘Course not,” Orlando snorts but taps his lower lip contemplatively. “Well, maybe I would be if I caught him humping your leg or something.”

“Very disturbing. Very.”

Orlando beams at him, pleased with Sean’s dry tone of voice, and steers them into yet another alley. Sean has forgotten what they came here for in the first place. He’s carrying some plastic bags with various foods and has turned down so many offers for touristy nick nacks that he’s a bit dizzy from it. But he distantly recalls that Orlando wanted something else besides that. The dog suddenly pricks its ears and is off again, determination in its motion. An unlucky cat around the next corner probably. 

“I just don’t get why he hates me, is all,” Orlando replies belatedly and stops next to yet another stall offering fabrics, his eyes following the dog’s disappearing tail. “People usually like me.”

“He’s hardly ‘people’, though.” 

Orlando’s hands glide over the woven fabric of a dark blue duvet on display and he fingers its rim almost absentmindedly, no visible sign of real interest. Ah yes, Sean remembers nevertheless; cold Moroccan nights, that was it.

“Animals, too. Remember Mei the monkey back in Tokyo?” Orlando says without looking at him, and in an almost bored tone of voice he turns to the salesman and gestures at the blanket. “Bishal?*”

Sean has never considered himself to be much for traveling the world when he was younger. He guesses it’s because he likes being at home, at ease, too much. But with Orlando, it’s like he arrives in a foreign country to visit a native friend there. Orlando always knows where to go and what to do, adapts so quickly to their new surroundings as if he’s always been there. 

Sean might be overwhelmed with the new perspectives, the sceneries unfolding in front of his eyes, like the flat and unyielding walls of the Citadel or the oily colours on the fish market. But he always sees Orlando for what he is and what he does, he sees the subtle change of his bearing, hears the variations of amiable or self assured laughter, knows the feeling of Orlando’s mouth trying out a new language, even as his lips map the ever familiar landscape of Sean’s body.

So, it is true what Orlando says, not that Sean has ever doubted that. People like Orlando, want to include him into their world or even arrange it around him. Orlando accepts it gladly, takes a gracious bow and shrugs lightheartedly, as if it didn’t take any effort at all from him, which it doesn’t. At that moment.

He also knows the scratchy feeling of Orlando’s chewed down fingernails as well as the taste of his disgusting calm-down mentols. He knows the weight of Orlando’s day leaning against him as his arms encircle Sean’s waist behind the easel and Orlando just closes his eyes and breathes him in.

But anyway, yes, animals usually adore Orlando as well. Sid is the sole exception to that – normally, they ignore Sean and fall right in love with Orlando. Like that monkey in Tokyo. 

Sean can’t help but smile when later that evening, the memory of this encounter flashes in front of his eyes again. He shuffles a little closer to Orlando under the new blanket and runs his fingers through too long curls, ruffling them. Orlando grimaces and Sean shrugs, fingertips pressing against his scalp, scratching just so.

“Can’t show affection better than by delousing someone. Just ask Mei.”

“Stop it, you.” Orlando swats his hand away only to catch it a moment later and nuzzle it. He rolls onto his side and into Sean’s space, easily picks up the conversation from hours ago. “I am extremely lovable. In fact I think so far I’ve only met 1.5 people who didn’t like me.”

Sean looks at Orlando in the pale light of the night, really looks at him, his dark eyes and the shadow of his cheekbones. When he moves his fingers, they brush against Orlando’s chin, he feels it when Orlando talks. 

“Point five?”

Orlando tilts his head on the pillow, nips at Sean’s index finger. “That’s Kate Bosworth. Slapped me when I tried to kiss her in fifth form.” The crooked smile in his voice curves against Sean’s fingertip. “I figure she only counts half because she wasn’t as opposed to it a bit later.”

Sean replaces his index with his lips and mouths, “That so?” against Orlando’s. Traces the seam of lips with his tongue as knuckles brush against the short soft hair in his neck, pushing it up a little. Orlando’s kiss is lazy, and his little sighs are friends with late summer afternoons, nowhere to be, nothing to do but this. Sean loses himself for a while in them, rocks to the gentle touch of a hand on his shoulder and then in the small of his back, their conversation not aborted but waiting somewhere in the wings.

The younger man’s grip on his hip tightens a little as Orlando pulls back, tries to stifle a yawn. Sean chuckles and settles back into the pillow, still facing him.

“I take it the other one was that prick in the gallery in Tunis?”

“Yeah,” Orlando grunts and with something very close to honest bafflement he adds, “Man, he really hated my guts, didn’t he? And he didn’t even talk to me.” He shakes his head, like he usually does when remembering this. His bemusement as well as his sharp memory of the animosity indicate its rareness. “Asshole.”

“Aye,” Sean offers quietly, obediently shuts his eyes as puckered lips dab his lids.

“Well, he was just jealous of me,” Orlando murmurs and his knee nudges between Sean’s thighs, affirming just that closeness. Sean exhales slowly as a few stray strands of his hair are pushed back behind his ear, and for a bit helpful fingers linger there.

“Ever considered he just might’ve been homophobic?”

“Nah,” Orlando drawls, even though he knows it’s true enough. “No one meeting you can resist you and your impeccable style and the way you smell.”

Sean laughs, face buried in the crook of his lover’s neck, and his skin buzzes where Orlando lightly bites his trembling shoulder.

“Not even Sid, I guess,” Orlando concludes, and to him that makes a lot of sense apparently. Because he stops talking, and so lips and tongue and hands find better things to do.

Well, it does add up. Sort of like when Sean gets a new idea for a painting, though ‘idea’ is too definite a word for it. First there’s this restlessness, this tingling sensation as if your hands have fallen asleep. He wants to, needs to paint but he can’t see it yet, has to force himself to wait. Then patterns take shape in his head and demand colours of different origin. Sometimes it takes fiddling with one canvas for a long time only to trash it eventually and start anew, all redundancy finally stripped away. Other times it’s about the technique or even just the means.

Like spray cans. Clicketyclicketyclick when you shake them to get them ready, the fume isn’t healthy, but he likes its sound anyway, likes the miniature sprinkle of colours that cling to his hands afterwards.

It’s hot in the yard – when is it not? – and too dry grass pricks the soles of his feet. His canvas, too large for any of the easels anyway, leans against the trunk of an olive tree and yeah, he might’ve been a little overambitious because its bark as well as the grass carry shades of silver and yellow now. Clicketyclicketyclick. 

He hears Sid sneezing somewhere near his calf, recognises the flapping of Orlando’s flipflops coming closer, and he lets go of the little spray nozzle when lips kiss his neck hello.

“I really prefer acrylics.” He just grins in response to Orlando’s wrinkled nose. “Please don’t tell me you wanna bring that skunk of a painting into the house.”

Sid sneezes again.

“I second that, mate,” Orlando says, hair and bermudas still saltwater-damp. He’s slung his beach towel over his bare shoulders and now carelessly spreads it onto the lawn, slumps down on it and leans back against the shadow spending wall right of Sean and his painting.

A teardrop of orange disperses once it has reached unitary gold – clicketyclick. The dog whines and leaves his side. Pavlovian effect.

“It’s gonna look good though, Sidi,” Orlando’s voice is quiet, sharing secrets, as the dog joins him in the shade. “It is well worth the smell, trust me.”

There’s a kink in Sean’s back, he stretches a little, stares at the canvas for a while. Then he goes inside to prepare some sandwiches, and something like curcuma yellow in thick acrylics. Orlando shares some of the bread with the dog, and his voice is slightly muffled for a while as he talks on.

“That’s tasty, eh? It’s the mayonnaise, Sean’s always generous with it. Mind you, you might wanna test carefully first whether it isn’t some kind of paint.”

Sean starts with the lower half, the latest layer of paint already dry there. Sid licks his flews and shuffles a little closer to Orlando, the mayonnaise sandwich, and the continued murmurs.

“Actually, I like oil. You know why? It takes longer to dry, and that means he has to wait for a bit, do other things. Like make supper.” Sidi yips, takes another offered piece of bread from Orlando’s fingers. “Or, I dunno, shag me. That’s an awesome pastime as well. And if you’re a good dog, he might take you for walkies. If he doesn’t forget.” A stage whisper, “He is a bit muddle-headed sometimes.”

“Oi”, Sean objects and dabs a small paint laden brush against the canvas as the corners of his mouth curl up.

“Not talking to you.”

And really he isn’t. Between the two of them, they finish the sandwiches, and Sid’s head rests on his paws once again, his dark wet eyes trained on Sean. He’s grown a bit bigger yet, each and every day he does that. Dirty pawprints at increasing height on the thighs of Sean’s trousers prove it, because no one teaches street mutts that it’s bad manners to jump up, and he surely isn’t gonna start. When Sean looks up from his painting, Orlando notices and gives him a smile, broad and happy and lazy, before he returns to his one sided conversation.

“Acrylics are better than oil, see. They don’t smear as much and the colours are just as bright. Just as much a bitch to wash out, too. Look, you still got some yellow on your fur. That’s what I’m talking about. Sean did a painting for a French viscount once, a huge thing, fire and dark onyx – it scared the shit out of the bloke’s hounds. You’re smarter than that, aren’t ya, Sidi?”

As Sean’s fingers caress his brush, Orlando’s stroke slow linear patterns onto black fur. His words are a constant murmur in the back of the painter’s mind, bits and pieces randomly penetrating his consciousness as he resumes working with tools and fingers.

“There’s infinite shades of yellow, I bet you didn’t know that. Some got really fancy names. Like, Chartreuse. Seriously, artists, it’s like they intentionally -,”

Jealousy, greed, cowardice, deceit. Hope, courage, peace. Depends on who you ask. Light with a wavelength of 570 to 580 nanometres. Of course he knows all that and it doesn’t go away once he starts smearing Winsor and Newton 228 onto Gesso smoothened linen, over layers of predecessors. And still, it feels different, it feels like something, something solid and real and not just an abstract concept. 

Orlando fondles Sidi’s little belly and coos to him, cranes his neck so he can whisper into the puppy’s ear. Sean is sure he has been about to do something different with the yellow gracing the ball of his thumb, just moments before. It’s only that now, all he wants to do is trace that jawline, down into the hollow of Orlando’s throat, wants to watch the slick paint dry there, watch it crack when Orlando’s breaths grow heavier, his swallows get harder.

“- dreams of paintings, you know? I mean, me? Football and bits from the news, and sex sometimes – which is awesome –, but paintings? Think about that – he gets inside them and they like, seep into him. Awesome, huh?”

Yeah, awesome. His chuckle over Orlando’s new favourite word breaks a spell – a bit like when you wake up from your own snores, he figures – and he blinks, finds himself covered in paint in front of something that looks quite finished. Finds himself slightly sunburned, his neck is itching, and thirsty, too.

Rubbing his hands on his thighs, which does fuck all to dried paint, he steps back. With the arch of his foot he shoves the scattered spraycans a bit closer to the slumbering canvas, which is enough of cleaning up for now, and Sidi is right there, sniffing the wobbling objects with earnest eagerness.

“Oi, you’re not playing fair,” Orlando complains with a grin, pushes up to his knees then his feet. “I was that close to luring the mutt away from you.”

“Is that so?” Sean gives cadmium orange another jostle with his toe and it rolls towards the shade, Sidi tailing along. Orlando, however, sidesteps both, gives the painting a glance when he stops on tainted grass.

“I told him all kinds of lies about you,” he boasts with lush satisfaction and Sean responds with a patronizing pat on the shoulder, his hand happy to stay on smooth skin afterwards.

“Hope they were at least good ones.”

Orlando’s gaze lingers on Sean’s sunburned neck for a moment before it slides up to meet his eyes. “Arabian Nights quality, you know me.”

“I reckon I do.”

Orlando beams at him, the smile crinkling his nose just so, and it gets even broader when Sidi jumps up at Sean suddenly and pushes him slightly off balance. 

“We’re getting him a collar?” Orlando asks grinning as the dog leans over and he futilely tries to save his belly from a wet nose and a wetter tongue. “I like red. Red?”

****

**99/00**

When Orlando comes out of the bathroom, tugging a pair of Sean’s sweatpants over his hips, he finds the artist right in front of the picture window again, hands curled in the pockets of the hotel’s short bathrobe.

His blond hair is still a little damp from the shower Orlando put him under, and he doesn’t stink as badly any longer, booze and cold sweat washed off his skin at least, if not the misery. Orlando aches for him, a deep and hollowing pain, the way your throat feels when you’ve screamed for hours and hours, and it must be this that turns his voice a little scratchy. 

“Hey,” he says quietly, fingers gentle on the fluffy terry cloth of Sean’s robe that seems too heavy, like too much to bear for his shoulders. “It’s still raining.”

It’s a stupid thing to say, because it seems like it’s always raining here and thick and never ending rivulets run down the window. They break the image of the always busy city of Tokyo in dusk outside; the reflection of the dimly lit hotel suite, of Sean inside is deformed.

“Yeah,” Sean exhales. He lets Orlando close a hand over his shoulder, gently rub it, but everything underneath the soft cloth is hard and tense. 

“Nothing to see,” he says when Orlando shares his view over his shoulder. 

“’cept the hugeass ad for fruitgums over there. Makes me hungry.” 

The lightness in Orlando’s voice doesn’t feel off exactly but doesn’t work either. The painter is not ignoring it, the words just don’t register. His eyes keep staring outside. 

“All I see,” he says, “is grey. Nothing but grey.”

Of course there are times when Sean doesn’t paint, doesn’t doodle on every available surface. Aside from being a lazy bum sometimes, he enjoys sex and food and football to the point of distraction, and it might take him some time to get down to business, so to speak. But there’s always something happening.

Orlando glances to the corner of the room where the painting equipment lies, still in the boxes and untouched since they accepted that invitation way before Christmas. It’s New Year’s Eve now and still, there are no paint tubes scattered across the room, no smell of Gesso and wet linen, no smears of acrylics on the bed frame, the doorknob or his toothbrush – Orlando by now misses it enough that he almost went to mess up the rooms like this himself, just for the familiarity of it.

He steps closer to Sean and wills his body, the solidity of it, to be a shield to the painter as he embraces him. Sean lets him, basic trust in the way he leans back that little bit now, but his eyes are still clouded, he is still passive as if he’s forgotten how to react to him. 

“Hey, love,” Orlando murmurs against his ear because that’s who he is, who Sean always will be first and foremost to Lan.

This time, Sean hears him. As if momentarily woken out of a shivering attack, he tries to reach for words, only to settle again, after a long search, for the same ones as before, already used and stale and yet even more loaded now. 

“Just grey.”

Maybe it should scare Orlando a little, maybe he should be jealous of the strong hold Sean’s mistress has over him sometimes, maybe he should be furious that she treats him like this and leaves him alone and blind. Only that he isn’t alone, that he isn’t blind because –

“I’m here.” The familiar shape of Sean’s earlobe is tender against Orlando’s lips. Sean tilts his head a little, inviting the touch and the words, begging for them, even though he might not even realise it.

“No one,” the painter says, “no one ever sleeps in this godforsaken town. No one ever stands still, even for the littlest of moments. How am I –“

His voice trails off, and Orlando tightens his grip, terry cloth momentarily bunching in his fist as he pulls it aside, slides his right hand underneath. The touch, skin on skin now, his hand over Sean’s ribs, causes Sean to blink, realise he must’ve been stuttering in his thoughts as well as over his words.

“I’m here,” Orlando repeats. 

The rain is getting heavier outside, splattering against the glass, all sound of it, of the streets and cars and people muted. A silent movie on an infinite loop. 

“You can’t get lost,” Orlando whispers, lightly nuzzles Sean’s neck, right above the collar of the robe. 

It’s the touch of his fingers, curling over a sharply outlined hipbone, of his lips mouthing Sean’s nape. This stands against the restlessness outside, playing tricks on your mind and stealing your sleep. 

“You don’t need to be afraid,” he says gently, and feels Sean tense for a moment, as the words sink in. And all Sean heard, Orlando knows that, is afraid – and impotence, because facing your fears makes them real. “Trust me,” he requests quietly, still soft but more firmly now, because like this it’s easier.

His hand wanders, his palm presses against Sean’s belly and up, pushes his painter against himself as it slides further up and pauses over his heart. Under the steadysoft pressure of Orlando’s fingers, Sean’s left nipple hardens and Sean exhales, eyelids fluttering momentarily.

“There’s nothing,” the artist repeats nevertheless, “just nothing. I only wish –,“ but they both know that he won’t finish the sentence. Part of the problem. 

No words. No durable metaphors. No cleavable images. 

Tiny people, crawling sowbugs twenty-five floors down. Massive buildings crowd the sky, hide lives in confined space. Anonymity. Open for business 24/7, courteousness and hideous entertainment, ancient culture corner to – can’t even read the signs – corner with fleeting ultramodernity, sei jūshi bisumaruku, Hoka ni nani ka - and Sean.

And Sean?

Their picture window is an eight lane junction and his eyes dart back and forth, back and forth. Because he can’t filter into the flow or just find a gap to slip through.

’I only wish –‘

“Tell me,” Orlando insists. He kisses further down Sean’s neck, mouth following the path of revealed skin as the bathrobe slides lower, towards Sean’s shoulder. Tender kisses, scrapes of his teeth against bone, thinly covered by flesh and skin – they don’t distract, they encourage. 

“What do you want?”

They both know it, but it’s not about that anyway. Orlando expects Sean’s right hand to find his under the robe and close around his wrist. He knows what the slight pressure, the downwards tug translates to, but even though he wants to – God, so damn much – he resists, lets Sean tighten his grip and then ask for it.

“Want you to touch me.”

“I am, aren’t I?” Orlando replies, playing dumb. But he rocks his hips against Sean’s ass and, digging his fingernails into the skin above Sean’s heart, he prompts once more, “Anything, love. You just gotta say it.”

Sean huffs, and there’s a hint of that friendly annoyance in it, though his gaze still unconsciously follows the paths of the raindrops, of the crowds outside. His voice is low but sure. “Your hand ‘round my cock. Get – get me hard.”

“Yeah,” Orlando agrees as his hands slide down, as fingers untie the loose knot of the rope holding the robe together. “Yeah,” in response to how Sean’s half hard cock feels in his hand, swelling in his palm as he strokes it slowly. He nuzzles Sean’s neck, the sharp line of his jaw when Sean leans back against him, the robe falling open even further.

The artist turns his face into Orlando’s neck as if to hide there. His breath hitches a little as his lover tightens his grip around his cock, precome feels warm and sticky against knowing fingers. 

Orlando cups his painter’s jaw, fingers mould along the outline of his neck, rough stubble underneath them. Onto dry and cracked lips he breathes, “What can I do?”

“Draw it out,” Sean replies because arousal coats everything like molasses. Orlando’s touch instantly becomes lighter, slower, more teasing, though his kiss is anything but, tongue and teeth and spit.

When Sean’s panting against him, when Orlando’s skin buzzes all over, he growls, “That’s not all.” The painter’s eyes drift closed with every other stroke, with every other reminder of Orlando’s own erection against him. “Tell me.”

“Want you,” Sean says. And Orlando waits. Because Sean can do more, better than that, and does. He grunts against his lover’s mouth, pulls back and looks at him, green eyes a different kind of hazy now. 

“Want to feel you deep, where you belong.”

Sean’s low rumble is a physical force, makes Orlando’s muscles quiver, makes him sweat, makes his heart race against his lover’s back. His fingers leave sticky marks of Sean’s precome on the sweatpants’ dark fabric as he pulls them down just enough.

“Fuck, need something to –“ 

Orlando can’t finish his sentence because despite that, he needs to kiss Sean again and now. He feels stupidly grateful when Sean pushes complementary body lotion into his hand, before the bathrobe slides over graceful shoulders and pools around both of their feet. 

Trembling, he slicks himself up, a few quick strokes and the accompanying dizziness of anticipation. His hand, his shimmering cock, the smooth roundness of waiting flesh – he looks up and catches his breath. 

For a moment there has been just that, heat to the point of blurring his vision, and he’s still quivering. But the fingers of his left hand tap lightly against Sean’s upper arm before they curl around it affectionately, pulling him back. Sean moans quietly, even before Orlando’s cock nudges between his cheeks.

“Don’t close your eyes,” Orlando murmurs, coaxing or ordering, something in between. “Keep them open while I fuck you.”

Unfocussed green stares at him, only him, and it’s not what Orlando meant, but it’s enough for now.

“Gonna get better.” He’s talking about the inability to paint as well as the pain from being breached without prep, and the painter doesn’t object. Sean chokes on his breath as Orlando pushes past the guardian muscle, his groan is of one momentary discomfort, not of disbelief. 

“It’s gonna be alright,” Orlando soothes, his voice densifying in the back of his throat, “don’t be scared.” Sweat dampens his forehead, the back of his nose, as he waits for Sean’s body and mind to adjust. 

He pushes in further, a steady, slow invasion, and it gets easier, feels so damn good. His arm is wrapped tightly around his lover’s slender waist as he brings them together, as close as possible. So much hot skin. Only when he can’t go further, when he’s filling Sean up as much as possible – “How does it feel?”

Sean’s voice is merely an echo of something felt before. “Hollow?” he tries. His eyes search Orlando’s face for a clue, as if he’s not sure what the other man was referring to, or what to answer. 

“Yeah?” Orlando asks again, shifts his hips, so his cock moves inside Sean’s body, coaxing quietly moaned breaths out of him with every new small thrust.

“No,” Sean contradicts himself and pushes back. His palm leaves a smeary imprint on the smooth glass of the window as he adjusts himself, broadens his stance. “I feel you now.”

“You always do.” The implicitness in these three words might be mistaken for presumptuousness if it weren’t for the hitch in Orlando’s breathing. “Don’t you?”

Fingernails dig into the back of his thigh as a response and Sean arches his back, muscles flexing. Orlando can’t resist, isn’t supposed to either. He bites Sean’s shoulder, not to hurt or to mark, just to keep himself anchored as he pulls back properly for the first time. Still slow but harder stabs, both hands hold on to hipbones, Sean’s body opens further with each thrust, closes tighter around him, pulls him in, so hot around him. 

“Look,” Orlando exhales, his fingers find Sean’s cock again, and he raises his gaze to the window as well. “What can you see now?”

Outside, the sky has gotten darker, midnight blue now. An endless number of lights glimmers, steady and blinking both, in the paths of raindrops. All of it merely background, a toning layer. 

“Oh,” Sean exhales, in something like wonderment, as his eyes focus.

“Tell me,” Orlando insists. “What do you see?”

“You,” Sean stares at his own reflection in the rain splattered window. “You, doing this to me.”

“’This’? C’mon,” Orlando complains with quiet amusement, rocks into Sean, tightens his hand around his cock. His lover merely sucks in a breath, so Orlando says it for him. 

“’This’ is your skin glowing and the lights outside shining through you,” – as if they weren’t both seeing it right there in front of them – “This is you naked and hard and goddamn perfect.” Another shift and thrust, and Sean raises his right hand to cup the back of Orlando’s head with it to pull him closer.

“’s your hand on my belly,” Sean takes over, eyes and fingers trace what he sees, “your fingers sprawled out to touch as much of me as possible. You got yer fist around my cock,” a smile in his voice, “as if you own it.” 

“I do, don’t I?” Orlando smirks, twists his wrist and glides his thumb over the sensitive slit. The responding ripples of pleasure on Sean’s face are mirrored in the window. 

The glass reflects his long legs, parted just so Orlando fits between them, the muscles bunching in his bent right arm, that holds completely still as Orlando kisses his biceps. There is the vulnerable hollow of his throat, raindrops shimmering in it when he swallows. Clear green eyes are painted in midnight blue and there’s a hint of a smile, the tip of his tongue darting out to trace it with boyish expectation.

“This is what I see, always,” Orlando confesses and Sean turns his head to nip at his jaw before he looks back at the window. 

They lock eyes in the reflection as Orlando’s next hard thrust shoves his lover forward. Sean braces himself against the glass with both hands, so Orlando can fuck him deeper, his eyes never leaving Lan’s in the window as life continues outside.

One hand on his hip, Orlando strokes up his back and grips his shoulder, gasps when Sean’s body tightens around him, the short, sweat dampened hair in his lover’s neck curls around his outstretched thumb. They move together, steady and needy, slow and smouldering, always like this for Lan, like his body is not big enough to contain what he wants to feel with Sean, for Sean. 

“Damn, damn,” he curses and his whole body craves release, achingly so when Sean arches his back and Lan watches him cup his balls, run his fist up his cock. “You’re killing me here.”

Sean’s chuckle mingles with his low moan as he tightens his inner muscles deliberately. Orlando feels his orgasm building up inside him – long overdue and still completely sudden – and his tells always register with Sean, push him on and over. So, when Lan bites his lower lip to force himself to focus, hang on, just a small whimper escaping him, Sean groans deep in his throat and comes. 

He comes in hot spurts, synchronized to Orlando’s unrhythmical pace, over his hand, against his belly, against the shiny glass of the window. It’s the sight of that, the feeling of his body pulsating around Lan, the sound of his ragged breaths that do it for Orlando.

For his seconds on the top, he can’t breathe, can’t think, can’t feel anything, feels everything. Then, he’s tumbling down, he falls through satisfaction and warmth, and slumps against Sean, his face against his lover’s heaving shoulders, as they both try to catch their breaths. 

Disjointedly, Orlando wonders whether the window is built to hold two grown men’s weight like it is now – he’s pretty certain it’d be an affront to Japanese polite reserve if they crashed through the glass down onto the pavement, stark naked. 

“Next time,” Sean muses with a rough voice, heavy against the glass and eyes looking down onto the streets, ”we’re gonna charge for that.”

It doesn’t surprise Orlando that they are roughly on the same page. He’s snickering helplessly against a sweaty shoulder, his chuckles causing his cock to slide out of his lover’s body, and Sean is laughing as well. 

Lan isn’t too sure whether right now he’s able to stand on his own, so when Sean turns around to face him, he wraps both his arms around his waist. Sean’s hand is sticky with come against the small of his back, their sweaty skin glues together here and there, and Orlando’s sweatpants still ride dangerously low round his thighs.

“You’re wonderful,” Sean says simply. 

Orlando leans his forehead against Sean’s in response. All there is left to worry about right now is how they’ll manage to get into their bed a few feet away, and he’s pretty optimistic regarding that. 

It’s alright.

Later, it is the sound of a bell that makes Orlando stir. He’s already sluggishly slapped Sean’s upper arm in an attempt to make it stop, before it registers that it’s not the alarm clock. He grumbles, tries to hide his head under the pillow that, coincidentally, Sean still uses. 

It’s a bit stuffy underneath, but the pillowcase smells of them and Orlando is happily curled against his side again, about to drift off once more, when Sean lifts the pillow. Orlando can feel his gaze and reluctantly opens the eye that is not mashed against the sheets.

“Did you know,” the older man says conversationally and gestures at the telly with the zapper in his hand, “that they strike that bell a hundred and seven times each New Year’s Eve?”

Orlando groans and slurps in sleepdrool. “Don’t know why they gotta do it in our bedroom, though,” he complains. When the bell sounds again, he wrestles the remote control out of his lover’s hand and switches the coverage off with grim satisfaction. 

He’s definitely awake now, though, and lightly bites Sean’s upper arm for that. Which leads to Sean responding in kind – little pecks and small touches accompany them in almost darkness and Sean’s southbound trail of kisses is encouraged by quiet whispers and exhalations rather than moans. 

Until the fireworks start.

“Now, look at that.” Orlando half sits up in their bed, his hand curling protectively around Sean’s neck. Resting his head in Orlando’s lap, the painter gets comfortable and the not-quite-clean picture window offers them quite the pretty sight. 

More and more explosions paint the sky with stars and twist colours into the night. Brilliant flashes chase one another before they dissolve into millions of firefly sparkles, each dying explosion seems to have two, three, four following in its wake. When you’ve got huge fiery blossoms, silver fountains and golden specs in emerald mist, there’s no need for a countdown or a clock, really.

“Happy New Year,” Sean murmurs and Orlando looks down at him with a grin on his face. The other man lightly kisses his belly in a nonverbal repetition of his words before he settles again to watch some more. His strong profile shimmers in the colours of the fireworks.

“I still don’t get why I couldn’t drag you out there,” Orlando says a bit later, stroking through Sean’s hair. Though really, he is rather adverse to the idea of wearing clothes at the moment, let alone leave the building. 

Besides, the reason for them staying in isn’t the gloom of the last days or tonight’s catharsis. It’s merely Sean being a plonker.

“Told you before, and I will tell you again,” Sean answers very seriously. “Only little minds play with bangers when everybody else does it.”

Orlando replies with dry exaggeration, “Yeah, I forgot how much fun it is to pacify an explosive task force in the middle of March because of your daft ideas.” Sean just grins fondly, so the younger man chuckles and says, “Well, then let’s just hope for you that we’re still here, come spring. I doubt they’ll let you through luggage inspection with the arsenal you hoarded.”

The painter pokes his side, exactly where he knows Orlando is most ticklish, and Lan collapses sideways, snorting indignation and trying to protect his side as Sean crawls over him. They let artificial shooting stars and the brightly lit night sky be, are too busy laughing into each other’s mouths. 

Sean’s thumbs brush Orlando’s curls of his forehead and Lan waggles his brows in a responding hello. So there’s a smile in the painter’s voice when he says, “I got an idea what we’re gonna do to celebrate the crack of the new millennium.” 

Orlando settles between Sean’s parted legs and looks up at him expectantly. “Let’s hear it then.” 

“How ‘bout we relocate to Mount Aso?” Sean suggests carefully, and his eyes don’t quite meet Orlando’s for they are busy retracing the paths of his fingers on the younger man’s features.

“Aso?” Orlando frowns, trying to get his geography right. “That’s in the south, right? Some kind of National Park?”

Sean nods. “I suppose I can do Nakamura’s commission there just as well.” 

The quietness of his voice is that of someone tiptoeing into his house late at night to not disturb anyone – considerate rather than insecure, but vigilant nonetheless. Orlando hums noncommittally, because it’s not really the commission work he cares about. In midst small kisses onto his chin and jaw, Sean adds, “Oh, they got hot springs there.”

Orlando stretches with lazy eagerness underneath his lover. “I’m so in for excessive spa loafing.” 

“So, that’s a yes already?” Sean asks. “No need to mention that there is an active volcano as well then?”

Orlando’s eyes widen dramatically.

“A volcano?! Fucking hell,” he exclaims enthusiastically and scrambles under Sean to get into an upright position, ‘cause certain levels of excitement can’t possibly be endured lying down. “What are you still lazying about here? If we pack right now, we surely can catch a flight down first thing in the morning, spit into lava midday!” 

He shoves Sean off in excitement but only laughs when the older man immediately pulls him back down on top of him. “A frigging volcano, think about that for a moment!” Sean kisses him on the mouth, to shut him up or to share the bubbling excitement, Orlando really doesn’t care. He sucks on Sean’s tongue, then pulls back, still too antsy. “I’ll pay even.”

“You?” Sean asks in mock surprise. “You tab me for money for the vending machine.” 

Orlando smiles down at him, overly bright, and pats his naked chest. “Which is why I can afford the big picture stuff. Consider yourself lucky.”

Sean doesn’t reply to that; Orlando doesn’t need him to.

****

**2011**

By now you might have asked yourself this: Why is it Orlando who keeps their passports and arranges all exhibitions? Why is it him who organizes the dawdling schedule of their lives? Because he surely isn’t perfect and life isn’t either. See, life is like this:

“Yesterday I couldn’t even remember the second verse to ‘God save the Queen’!” Orlando grumbles. “Bloody hell, how long has it been since we’ve been home?” 

Sean is decidedly not a morning person. But Orlando wakes to his little pleased sighs when Sean slides into him before the sun has sneaked through the blinds. Afterwards, when Sean is really mostly awake, he makes Lan a strong cuppa tea.

“My feet are soaking wet. Effing rain.” 

They could have gone to Singapore, or Las Vegas. Sean sees to it that they end up in ‘The Red Lion’, disgracing themselves during a pub quiz and laughing themselves silly.

“I am starving for chocolate cake, man.”

Sean buys Orlando fishing boots that are three sizes too big. Lan nearly falls into the river as he stumbles over his own feet even more than usual, stomping around in his new pride and joy.

“Where the hell is that Frank Miller I was reading the other day?”

When Orlando comes home from work one evening, the house smells like Sean has ashed-and-burned the entire neighborhood and the kitchen is an utter mess. A partially frozen DQ chocolate cake, epitaph of Sean’s baking skills, waits for him on the living room table.

“I quit my job. Yeah, yeah, good riddance, I know. “

Sometimes, Sean puts on the specs he constantly misplaces and reads to Orlando. A fifty-two year old man shouldn’t be as good in doing different voices, not if they come out of speech bubbles.

“I really, really, really don’t want to get up.” 

Some of the commissions Sean has done, make the artist shake his head over himself, though he is good-humored enough to not bury his face in his hands. But traveling isn’t cheap, and this pays the bills. So there.

“Have you ever wondered what your life’d be like if we hadn’t bumped into each other? I mean, really what are the chances that one –“

Orlando is right in the middle of something, and Sean’s voice only registers peripherally, and he grunts, a wordless plea for a repetition. ‘I love you,’ Sean says, from the doorway. And slightly fainter, as he’s walking out again, ‘Always have.’

So, Sean’s world spins in a slightly different pace. Consequently, you wouldn’t trust him to remember where he put your passport or whether he actually got paid for a painting either, would you? But Orlando can manage all that reality check stuff just fine for the two of them. Sean’s expertise lies in other fields, and we covered those along the way as well, didn’t we?

****

**2028**

“I read this book,“ Sean says into the silence, puffs smoke into the crystal clear air and then slips the cigarette back between his lips. Orlando buries his hands in the pockets of his dark blue coat and tilts his head back as they walk on, trusting Sean to not let him run into a tree.

It might be a while until Sean will go on. But it’s not that they have anywhere to be, and even if it gets dark early now, it’s still quite a few hours until sundown reaches their woods. Sean does that from time to time, be silent for a good long while and only say a sentence here and there, as if to keep Orlando updated to where his mind has strayed in the meantime.

“It was about this bloke,” Sean goes on. “He was a writer, sort of, and a bit of a pansy.”

Orlando smiles at that and lightly bumps his shoulder against Sean’s, walking closer on the small path.

“Anyway, there was this bit when he lay at a river, I think, yeah, a river. It was during spring and he was looking at all the –“, Sean’s right hand brings the cigarette back to his lips and when it pulls away again, he makes a sort of aborted gesture, indicating the forest surrounding them. “Like worms and beetles on the ground and the shape of grass blades.”

Orlando looks down to the ground and with his boot he shuffles a bunch of yellow and red leaves to the side. He can’t see any beetles, but he’s sure there are some. It’s not too hard to imagine their tiny crawling sounds underneath the constant rustling of the trees’ branches, slowly and steadily moving in the wind. 

He catches a falling Ginkgo leaf out of the air and it is honey coloured and picture perfectly shaped. He takes its tiny stalk between thumb and index, twirls it, repeats that when he holds it up against Sean’s cheek. The artist chuckles and catches Orlando’s teasing hand, and holds it captive.

“And?” Orlando prompts him, lets go of his leaf in favour of interlacing his and Sean’s fingers. “He was a writer, yeah? So, did he compose an ode to blossoming beauty of nature and women?”

Orlando is not really interested in the thoughts of people who died hundreds of years ago. They do go on and on, and there’s never any room for his own stories in exchange for theirs. Sean however reads all the time, when he’s not painting. Orlando generally doesn’t like books, but he loves the ones Sean has been reading, loves Sean summarising them for him. It’s not really about the books, though.

“Don’t think it did,” Sean says, “though there was a girl in there somewhere, I don’t remember her name. And he didn’t write about spring.”

“So, he just lay there and counted beetles?” Orlando asks. “Or did he paint the shape of grass?”

“Right,” Sean says dryly. “Because I secretly read Bob Ross books.”

Orlando cackles and steps in front of him, walking backwards. Sean wraps an arm around his waist, hand pressing against the small of his back, so when Orlando stops they don’t fall over. Lan rubs his cold nose against Sean’s cold cheek and murmurs,

“What then?”

“He just lay there,” Sean answers, “and felt miserable.”

Orlando frowns and pulls back enough to look at Sean.

“’But it is too much for my strength, I sink under the weight of the splendor of these visions’,” Sean quotes and kisses Orlando‘s scowl softly.

Orlando looks over his shoulder. He thinks that it is strange that the woods are the prettiest at this time of the year. ‘Cause all the red and yellow colours aren’t there to attract bees or do their osmosis thing, like in spring and summer, but really are signs of withering, of the upcoming cold winter. 

But whatever, still pretty. 

The air smells of drying leaves and the muddy ground, an earthy flavour, rich and solid and tasty. And even the sun has a softer light now and Orlando loves that he doesn’t have to squint any longer when he looks at the patches of blue sky in between the trees’ crowns.

Orlando looks back at Sean and smiles at him. 

“Lately, your taste in books is rather questionable. ‘The weight of the splendor of these visions’? That sounds like constipation.”

Sean laughs and his eyes linger on the huge chestnut not very far from them. Its trunk is the broadest of all the trees around them and its branches hang low thanks to their own weight. The light catches in its leaves, and where it reaches the ground it shimmers here and there on the shiny surface of freshly fallen chestnuts. 

Orlando can’t resist, he never can, and he picks one up, its smooth roundness feeling perfect in his palm.

“When I was a kid,” he says, “we used to make animals out of these. With toothpicks for legs. Did I ever tell you that?”

‘Course he did, does it every year around this time. 

“Once or twice,” Sean replies. Orlando kicks up some leathery dry leaves and when some of them hit Sean’s trousers, the painter growls in response.

“Serves you right, you bookworm,” Orlando grins, before he bends down again to scoop up some more chestnuts. 

“Is that so?” Sean asks, nonchalant innocence a dead give away, right before he ‘accidentally’ shoves Orlando off balance so he lands in a pile of leaves. 

“What are you? Five?” Orlando snorts and ends up sitting on his butt, all dark blue and black in midst burgundy red and gold.

Sean looks down at him and shakes his head before he starts to laugh. The quietly exuberant autumn beauty around them as well as Sean’s smile let Orlando answer in kind, though his stupid knee acts up when he tries to stand up. Sean holds out his hand and encourages,

“C’mon, bug, rise and shine.”

When Lan is on his feet again, he stuffs a handful of leaves down the front of Sean’s jacket. The older man struggles only a little bit as the leaves make crispy crumpling sounds between them when Orlando wraps his arms around the painter to pull him close.

His lips taste of smoke and cold earthiness and of Sean, and Orlando is addicted to that flavour. Must be a bit of that that makes his voice almost catch in his throat with happiness when he declares, 

“Man, I love autumn.”

***

Blackblue darkness envelops the house like a thick warm blanket and Orlando carries a mug of steaming tea with him as he climbs the stairs. This is one of the few houses they’ve lived in over the years that has a separate studio. Though Orlando has always liked arranging his life around Sean and his canvases, it’s actually kind of nice to be able to walk through the house without accidentally stepping onto open and half empty tubes of paint every other day. 

“I made tea,” he announces as he pushes the door to the studio open with his foot. 

Sean half turns to look at him, modeling paste and a spatula in his hands and a brush’s handle between his teeth. He mumbles ‘thanks’ around his brush before he goes back to work. 

Orlando takes a sip from the hot tea because it’ll be cold and stale before Sean finds time to drink it anyway. He glances at the state of the painting and shakes his head in amusement as he notices Sean’s choice of colours. Figures. 

After they returned from their stroll through the forest, Sean had disappeared into the studio immediately and Orlando finds that he has tossed his coat and scarf carelessly onto the one piece of furniture in the room, the comfortable two seater. 

Lan pushes the clothes aside and sits down, the smile on his face broadening as he sees that, hours later, Sean is still wearing his thick padded boots but has pushed the long sleeves of his plain undershirt up as far as they will go. 

Orlando wraps both of his hands around his mug and watches Sean work, watches the muscles in his lower arms flex, soaks in the quiet confidence in the line of his lover’s shoulders, before he stretches so he can look at the painting for a second time. 

He’s rather glad that he’s sitting down and too lazy to get back up. Because as soon as his eyes find the canvas he feels the stupid want to run his fingertips along the strong and prominent creases of thick mortar and paint.

With the smell of wet acrylics and black tea in his nose Orlando thinks back to their afternoon, the invisible beetles and the range of yellow and red and brown, the shapes of leaves and – he chuckles against the rim of his mug – the shape of grass blades, too.

It’s just like Sean to walk through the woods in autumn and come back with a craving for this. 

With an adoration for blue. 

Underneath the rough and ragged structure of the painting’s surface, the indigo still shines steady and smooth, varying from lighter tones to this special shade of almost black. One of Orlando’s favourite colours and it reminds him of the sky in the middle of the night as darkness stretches endlessly – Sean breathing quietly next to him and the only things changing are the words he mumbles against Orlando’s skin. 

Despite his woolen socks Orlando’s feet are getting a little cold again, so he draws them onto the couch and pushes them under Sean’s abandoned coat. The quiet rustling makes the artist look up from his work. He drops his brush into a glass with solvent, and with a glance at the mug in Orlando’s hands he says,

“I thought that was for me?”

“Yeah, sorry,” Orlando replies. Sean’s tea doesn’t burn his tongue any longer and he takes more little sips, used to the taste licked from the painter’s lips. “I figured you were warm enough already.”

“Thief,” Sean huffs affectionately and reaches for a new brush, new tubes.

In spring, when nature wakes from her slumber, sprouts emerge everywhere in this gentle, dark lime green. The longer Orlando looks at the canvas the more tiny specks of this green appear in midst the blue. Green flickers through thinner layers of indigo, mingles with turquoise tones, green gleams next to rich royal blue.

He knows and loves each wrinkle, each scar, each sign of age on Sean’s body, but when Sean’s green eyes meet his, Orlando just sees them. When he kisses Sean’s rugged features, the deep laugh lines around closed eyes run even deeper and he only pulls back when Sean’s lids flutter and the painter looks up at him. 

Lan may be fifty-one, but that doesn’t mean he can’t act like a horny teenager sometimes. More than just sometimes. Okay, every time when Sean looks at him like that, spring glimmering in his eyes.

Orlando blinks a few times, notices that he has been trying to sip from a mug that has been empty for a while now. 

Sean stands in front of the easel, his stance relaxed and his arms crossed in front of his chest. Lan puts the mug down, gets up and steps up next to him. He leans forward a little to look closer at the thick blue structure on the canvas. 

“Looks like the bark of that Ginkgo tree.”

He reaches out to test whether it feels the same as well, but Sean lightly hits his fingers with his brush. Orlando retaliates by slapping his shoulder, but he says,

“I like it.” 

Well, of course he does. The specks of green especially. But Sean knows that anyway and so Orlando just waits for the equally affectionate response.

“I’m glad.”

Sean turns away and starts putting caps back onto tubes before he picks up his tools and brushes and leans over the small sink in the corner to rinse them off. 

***

Orlando pokes the crust of the marinated pot roast experimentally but to be honest, it doesn’t even look edible. He never has the patience to sit in front of the oven to wait for the exact moment when to turn it off and this probably falls into the category of ‘straight into the bin’.

Sean has kicked off his boots by now and his steps are quiet as he comes into the kitchen. He doesn’t comment on the slightly burned smell that still hangs in the air – he never does, actually – but just opens the window and helps himself to some cookies from the cabinet. 

“Y’know,” Orlando says, tossing his reading glasses onto the still open but useless cookbook, “I did some research on the guy you told me about earlier. Beetle bloke Werther, remember?”

He looks up to find Sean nodding and mumbling an affirmation around a biscuit. 

“You forgot to mention that he killed himself in the end.”

Sean frowns, thinking. 

The suicide was the climax of the entire story. But then, Sean reads books his own way, remembers the things that caught his interest and discards the rest. Sometimes, Orlando finds a paperback that Sean has told him about, and when he reads it, it’s almost like it’s a different book altogether.

But this time realisation dawns on Sean’s face. 

“Oh, yeah, because he didn’t get the girl, right?”

Orlando weighs his head from side to side and stuffs the roasting tin into the sink. 

“Not just that, I think.”

For a moment it’s quiet, aside from the rushing of the tab and Sean’s chewing, then the painter says,

“If he’d gotten the lass, maybe she’d have set him straight.”

Orlando knows that Sean believes that to be true. He never made a secret out of how much he depends on Lan, always has.

“Yeah, maybe,” Orlando therefore concedes and shrugs lightly. “He’s still a bit of a twit though.”

Orlando doesn’t worry much. Never has because things always work out somehow, don’t they? And yeah, he knows that this is because of Sean’s steady presence at his side. 

Sean steps in front of him now, trapping Orlando between himself and the sink.

“Hm,” he hums and covers Lan’s hands on the counter with his own, “aren’t all artists? Sort of idiots?”

“Nah,” Orlando drawls, “not the real good ones.”

Sean chuckles and kisses him, tasting of chocolate and butter. 

“Thanks.”

“You so sure that was meant as a compliment to you?”

Orlando’s teasing is audible in his voice and he rubs his nose against the shell of Sean’s ear. Sean lets him lean against him, into his solid heat for a moment.

“Yeah, I am,” he then decides simply and wraps his arms loosely around Orlando. With a glance at the mess that is the kitchen he says, 

“Come on, let’s go out for dinner.”

****

**2014**

Funny, which things stick with you and which don’t, innit? You loose your new scarf a week after buying it, but this sodding scratchy rag you own always resurfaces even though you could’ve sworn you trashed it.

Traveling a lot changes it only a little. You never really thought about it like that, speaking of it, more as ‘moving on’. Sometimes it happens accidentally, like that time when the two of you went to Thailand for a holiday and just didn’t leave again, sometimes you actually decide to ditch the current place and find something new.

With all the miles behind you, you don’t own that much stuff. You have a few brushes and other tools that you favour and remember putting into your suitcase. Some books make it through one or two relocations before they vanish. He sometimes picks up souvenirs, postcards and random clutter, and if there’s still room left in his suitcase he takes them with him (this is how a flat in Xi’an ends up with a hideous ashtray, shaped like an alligator).

He owns this huge colourful hammock. And he keeps owning it. You gave it to him, must’ve been for Christmas almost twenty years ago because you remember buying it in that little shop in St. Vincent (the smallest shop you could find, crap with choosing from wide ranges that you are). Later, it was the first thing that he dragged it out of his suitcase, thousands of miles away. When you said that it was chillingly cold outside, he just doweled the suspension devices into the living room walls.

Since then, you have used up generations of brushes, read lots of books. He has converted some of his postcards into notepads and always seems to arrive at their newest home of choice exclusively with single socks. The hammock, though, - paint smeared and repeatedly patched up, worn soft but still as colourful – the hammock’s still there.

You find him on his favourite spot on deck. Of course.

He’s baking in the sun and his darkly tanned right leg dangles over the rim of his hammock, rhythmically swaying to the gentle motions of the boat. Your hand runs along the thick rope that rigs it to the boat as you make your way over. It feels rough, your fingertips can make out the thin crust of salt on it, the same that makes his hair even more unruly than usual. He rubs his face against the soft material of his hammock while he naps.

The whodunit he’s been reading lies on his chest and his hands are folded on top of it. His breathing is deep and even, fills you with more calm than the lazy swashing of the waves.

You crouch down on the wooden planks next to him, next to his naked, dangling leg. You touch his warm skin, kiss his knee and watch a smile lapping around his lips. He shifts a bit, into your touch and away from it because he’s ticklish there, his lower leg pushes against your chest when your tongue traces his kneecap. 

He opens his eyes to watch you when you cradle his heel in your palm and your thumb finds its favourite spot right under the thick round anklebone. You place tiny kisses with soft lips onto the smooth skin, onto the smooth flesh of his calf.

“I love the tiny hairs on your skin,” you say, and it’s just one of those facts of life.

He stretches the three limbs that your gentle touch doesn’t hold captive and regards you sleepily. 

“Man, you’re random,” he replies and yawns.

You stroke up the back of his calf, strong but relaxed muscles, dark hairs tickling you now. You kiss his shin, kiss up his leg and let your hand follow the path of your lips. Taste - Salt, Sun, Him. He parts his legs even further and purrs contentedly when your hand splays over the inside of his thigh.

“Did you win your running battle against the evil white swirls?” he asks and in response you dig your fingers a little deeper into the soft flesh right below his crotch. He chuckles and squirms, the hammock sways a little more. His right hand leaves his chest reaching for you, you rise so he his fingertips can touch your face, stroke the spot right below your ear.

“Maybe,” you say with a smile. “Wanna see it?”

He shakes his head, and scratches his belly right above the rim of his shorts. He knows you’re watching, so he pokes his belly button with his index, swirls around it to make you smile. 

“Y’know,” he rumbles, “’s room enough for the both of us.” He shifts a little, swaying, and his toe gently pokes your thigh, tagging you.

As you climb in with him, it makes perfect sense to you. Which things stick with you and why. Woven patterns envelop you, their colours shining with the sun behind them, as he wraps his arms around you. He clutches you tightly – “Don’t wanna fall outa this thing. Again.” – and you chuckle against his hot skin as your body moulds against his.

****

**2009, December**

_On the back of this postcard, arriving on 12/24/2009:/i >_

_Heya mate,_

_told you I’m no welsher – and this even is sufficiently stamped (I checked with the local post office, which is open about 1 hr. per week). Couldn’t find palm trees or breasts as you requested, but this is still pretty enough to pay my gambling bets, right? Sean thinks so and refuses to upgrade this card by splattering some of his paint onto the other side. Might have to do with him being a LAZY arse and not even having bothered removing his kit from the hallway, not to mention actually unpacking it – well, aside from the odd pencil that he keeps misplacing and that ends up poking me in the arse._

_He says ‘hi to the pothead’, by which I suppose, he means you. So, hi._

_In the actually very plausible case of you reading this after having smoked some – Picture this: Christmas days on deserted beaches, under palm trees, freshly cut open coconuts instead of eggnog and the splashing sounds of the bluest waves in the background. Neat, huh?_

_Man, I’m writing from the beach that is currently swarmed with other tourists. Sean says it makes his head buzz – as if the tourists are to blame for that – but I think it’s awesome, I just chatted with a dealer in gems from Israel, who let me in on the secrets of emerald buying while sun lotioning his belly. Anyhow, beach + me + tons of sun. That’s how it is here.  
_Continued on the back of another one (date of arrival: 12/20/2009):__

_\- Ack, ran out of space there (two for the price of one, right?)._

_People are awfully nice here, makes you wanna walk around with a big grin on your face all day even if you have no idea what they are talking about. Thank God for international fast food chains and their point-to menu displays, otherwise we’d have starved two times over – always the same when we arrive somewhere new, you’d think we’d learn._

_Sean can say ‘Two Big Macs, please’ in Thai by now, but we’ve already branched out to local food as well – just point at something on the market and you’ll get it, complete with a demonstration how to eat it (nice people, yeah?)._

_The postcard actually shows one of the floating markets – not the equivalent of pizza delivery, in case you wondered – which is all kinds of cool, considering that there’s fish following you everywhere, too._

_So, speaking of food - we try to add Christmas spirit to the general awesomeness that is Tarutao, though so far we’re not all that successful. I tried test roasting a turkey yesterday and let’s just say till Christmas dinner I should better invest some time into channeling your five star cook housemate. Sean still ate the burned bird but he has a stomach made of iron (beans on toast and custard is all I’m saying). Maybe we should be settling for Christmas carols in flipflops on the beach or something._

__Continued on yet another one (date of arrival: 12/23/2009):_ _

_Man, I should write in smaller letters. There is, like, no space whatsoever on these things…_

_Got this card from Bangkok where we stopped over (proof that I took your breast-request seriously: there are none to be had (on postcards at least), not even in the capital city)._

_You’d love the temples, mate, I bet you’d be all over the shapes and forms and would be arrested in no time for fondling some Buddha (NOT on, even if you’re a sculptor and merely showing your appreciation, trust me). Sean was blown away. Seriously, it was like he was on a constant high and I could, like, park him in a temple, go on a boating trip (or visit the pathology museum – grossness made of win). When I picked him up ours later, he’d still be wandering around like a boy in a candy store. Well, he likes gold, doesn’t he._

_But Sean’s instincts never have failed us and Bangkok is gorgeous – Sean made an enormous mess of the hotel room we stayed in for the couple of nights we were in town, I suppose the staff is still wondering where the bright orange stains in the sheets come from…  
_Continued on YET another one (handed over by the postman in the wee hours of 12/19/2008):_ _

_Speaking of legacy – I think Sean left his Nike sneakers somewhere in your house. And no, you don’t need to forward them, ta. Dunno how long we’ll be staying though it might be a while. I just now realized how much I’d actually missed Asia and, aside from Bangkok and the rest of the mainland, Tarutao is such a fantastic place to be._

_Sean’s been growing roots in a sketchy beach bar and is besotted with the water’s turquoise (excellent taste!) and the mango smoothies (even more excellent). The bar tender in turn is smitten with Sean, who seems to be the only person finding Nueng’s jokes actually funny. So, free smoothies and art talk equals happy Sean. Would be reason enough to stay here forever. But aside from that, Kitesurfing? Religion, man._

_Gotta go, last card is full & I need to find Sean and convince him that the next turkey experiment should be a joined effort. Hope u r well!_

_Cheers, Lan_

_****_

**December, 23rd, 1993**

When Orlando started talking about his plans for Christmas for the first time, it was still hot enough to sit shirtless on Sean’s miniature balcony. Sean listened to detailed ideas involving snowball fights and French Christmas carols while the oil pastels in his fingers felt soft and sticky from the heat.

Orlando never once gave up on the idea of a white Christmas, but his thoughts changed location. The colder it got and the longer summer was gone, the closer to Canterbury they moved. Sean listened to that as well as he built frames, stretched wet linen over them, painted the new canvases.

Orlando mapped it out clearly, naïve faith in weather forecast aside. He found out the train schedules, the easiest (and cheapest) route to get back to England. He asked whether Sean would need to get his brother a gift, if he were to stay with him, even before Sean had thought about actually accompanying Orlando.

“Well, duh,” Orlando said. “As if I was gonna sit in that boring train on my own. – Hey, you don’t think that back home they can, like, imprison me in a boarding school or something, do you?”

No, Sean didn’t really think that. And in the end it was him who turned a lazy summer whim into reality when he pushed Orlando into the railway station to buy tickets one chilly day.

Here they are now, somewhere between Dover and London, in a small compartment they aren’t allowed to smoke in. There has been a young German sitting with them for a bit, but since she got off the train, no one joined them again and they got the compartment to themselves.

Sean’s been staring out into the greyish landscape for a while now, fingers playing with a complementary (stolen) biro, the name of the French National Railway company on it. For lack of a cigarette, he slips the back of the pen between his lips, teeth catching on the smooth surface. While that is oddly calming, he still turns his head to look at Orlando next to him.

In the soft yellow light Lan’s skin still looks tanned even though the sun hasn’t been a frequent visitor in Montpellier lately. He is sleeping, his already smooth features even softer now, and he looks like a little boy, if it weren’t for the long limbs and the outgrowing Mohawk. One miniature headphone dangles over his chest, the other one – Orlando always only listens with one ear, as if he fears he might miss something happening around him – the other one shushes quiet music into Orlando’s left ear.

The ride isn’t bumpy, just miles and miles through small towns and monotone landscape, and if only Sean had a piece of paper, he could draw a bit. As it is, within reach is only the brochure Orlando nicked from the hovercraft. Sean and his biro end up re-enacting Pearl Harbour on it to the even sounds of the train’s motion and Orlando’s breathing.

Orlando mutters something in his sleep, then pulls the headphone out. Sean takes his mumbling as a wordless complaint over the uncomfortable position he has been sleeping in, and hums in a sort of general condolence to that. 

And that quiet sound is just enough for Orlando’s slumbering brain to locate Sean’s whereabouts. He shuffles a little more, slouching down in his seat, rests his temple on Sean’s shoulder and settles again.

Sean holds perfectly still, because shifting might wake him again. All it’d take Sean would be just that little tilt; just that littlest bit of movement and his cheek could rest on Orlando’s curls. 

He holds perfectly still and fears that Orlando might wake anyway because suddenly his heart is thundering irregularly. As if it tries to find a way to actually move up in his body to be closer to that light weight pressing down on his shoulder. 

He isn’t really sure he could bear more than this, though. He doesn’t lie to himself, knows who he is painting, who he is dreaming about sometimes, and he is neither strong nor particularly selfless. 

So, he holds still and doesn’t turn into the touch, but he doesn’t wake Orlando either.

Orlando stirs just before they reach London, where Sean has to get off. He watches as Sean gets his stuff from the rack, rummages around a bit, and his voice is still a little sleep roughened when he asks, “Sean?”

Sean looks up from his backpack when Orlando doesn’t instantly go on. Lan rubs nonexistent sleep out of his eyes and scratches his cheek that has the pattern of Sean’s thick woolen pullover imprinted into it.

“The train back leaves at 9.15 on the third, yeah? You won’t –?“ His voice trails off.

Sean is smiling a little when he guesses, “ – forget the date? Am I really that muddleheaded?”

Orlando shakes his head with all seriousness whereas usually he’d instantly make fun of Sean’s scatterbrained nature. Now, though, he fiddles with the batteries of his walkman and asks quietly,

“You are going back, aren’t you?”

Sean just stares at him for a moment. Only when Orlando finally looks up from his task, he remembers that Lan can’t read his mind, realizes that he is really waiting for an answer.

“Of course I am,” he says. “You better save me a seat.”

Now it seems to be Orlando’s turn to stare. Then a grin takes over his face, and he nods,

“Sure thing. Oh, and –“ he drags his backpack out from under the seat, just as the loudspeaker crackles and Sean’s station is announced. “I got a present for you. But you gotta wait till Christmas morning before you open it.”

“I didn’t –“ Sean starts, but Orlando’s grin just grows wider and he merely shrugs. He presses the slightly rumpled parcel into the artist’s hands.

“You totally owe me big time for this, Picasso,” he says and lightly kicks Sean’s foot to get him to move. “See you soon.”

At the station, Sean is picked up by his brother who is all smiles, and his wife and his kids are generous with hugs, homemade scones and a place at the richly decorated dinner table. It starts snowing outside, just like Lan predicted.

On Christmas morning, Sean opens Orlando’s present and has to sit down because he is laughing so hard. 

A cheap plastic frame holds a crappily executed paint-by-numbers unicorn, and it is accompanied by a small note with big letters on it. It reads,

 

****

**1995, June**

Orlando can’t really remember most conversations he had with Sean back in Montpellier. Sure, he recollects the lazing about on Sean’s balcony or in Pierre’s restaurant, the nights/early mornings accidentally spent on the beach. But the hell does he remember what they were talking about exactly.Some conversations though, they stick with him like an audio drama he’s listened to before going to sleep when he was little. He can hear his own voice in his head, Sean’s too and recalls every single word.

Like the talk from almost two years ago that started with him on Sean’s doorstep, feeling twitchy and not knowing where to put his hands. Until Sean opened. –

I had sex with Justine last night.

C’mon in.

Ask me how it was. ‘Cause I really need to – but I don’t want to sound like I’m –. Please?

I didn’t know you were seeing Justine.

Well, I’m not. It just sorta happened. 

Okay. How?

There was this thing at Emile’s. And, like, everywhere I turned there she was. She’s really cool, not the way when girls try to be funny but aren’t. But really. So, one moment we were laughing and the next we were snogging. And then, well.

And then you slept with her.

Yeah. It’s nothing like snogging, or, you know, whatever. It’s –

– Lan?

Why doesn’t anyone ever say it’s like that, huh? I mean they go on and on about how it’s the best thing in the world or warn you about STDs. No one ever says that it’s the weirdest thing ever. I mean, how can I ever talk to someone again that I heard making noises like… And how can I look at her again when she’s had my cock… It’s frigging weird, that’s what it is.

Christ, yeah.

Hey, you’re not supposed to agree with me. Aren’t you gonna tell me that it’s, I dunno, gonna get better? That it’s amazing or something?

Would ye believe me?

I think so. I mean, it’s not like it can get any worse. – Fuck.

Alright. Except for the first time, sex is amazing. You’ll figure out what feels good and you’ll always share this special connection afterwards.

Liar. How – how was yours? I mean –

Fantastic.

Really?

Aye, for the minute and a half it lasted.

Oh.

Yeah.

But, I mean, it spoke of how much you fancied her?

That’s what I said, too. Before crying meself to sleep. 

I figure, I’ll just have to stick to wanking for the rest of my life. At least, my right hand doesn’t whimper…

It’s just sex, Lan.

Is it?

Aye. Tis strange and – well, it can make ye feel like the biggest idiot in the universe – 

Oh God, yes.

\- but you still gonna end up wanting to do it again.

Because if there’s superawkward, then there’s got to be superawesome too, right? It gets, like, better, yeah?

Sure. I’m up to lasting a whole five minutes now.

Wha-? – God, you’re such a moron, Sean! 

I’m not the one who snorted Coke through their nose just now. ’m sorry. I’m shit at this, you know that.

I don’t think anyone is good at giving a sex pep talk. Well, maybe if I were best mates with a gangsta rapper or something.

I mean it, though. It’s not always embarrassing. It can be really good, messiness and all. 

I think, I’m still not gonna be able to look at Justine ever again without thinking of – urgh.

Maybe not. But there’s plenty other –

\- fish in the sea? Hey, if you bring mermaids into this conversation, this is gonna be a whole new level of weird.

Hmhm. So, how do ye reckon merfolk – 

\- Do it? I have no idea, man.

***

Today it’s not on the doorstep and there’s no coke involved. Not much is like back when, really.

Sean is showering off salt water and sand, and Orlando brushes his teeth, so he has foam around his mouth like some rabid animal. There’s a dark grey blind spot on the mirror in their miniature bathroom and when Orlando stretches a little and grins, it’s right where his left front incisor is, making him look utterly demented. He decides to never get into a street fight; bashed out teeth look shit on him and it’s not like he’s from the block or anything. 

His mirror self frowns at him when that little bit of randomness somehow reminds him of this one conversation with Sean (maybe ‘cause the thought of Sean as a gangster amuses him to no end). And somehow, easily like it happens sometimes, things fall into place. 

Things that he sums up with, “I’m a moron.”

Sean turns the water off and his head appears from behind the faded yellow shower curtain, water dripping from his fringe. 

“What?”

“I’m a moron”, Orlando repeats because there’s no denying him having said it, spits toothpaste into the sink. “I should have had sex with you.”

“Okay…” Sean says and the question mark behind that is hanging in the air like a big fat neon sign. Orlando is kinda busy with flossing now, well, and staring at Sean in the mirror as the other man gets out of the shower, so it’s not like he minds the gap between Sean’s acknowledgement and the following questions. 

“When?” Sean wants to know and shakes his head, tiny water drops splashing everywhere. “And why does that make you an idiot?” 

“You remember that talk we had on your balcony in Montpellier, the one about sex?” Orlando replies and almost rolls his eyes before he remembers that actually - and even though it feels like it - Sean is not living inside him and can’t read his thoughts. So, his voice sounds a little sheepish when he adds, “About me doing it with Justine.”

Behind his towel, dabbing his face, Sean’s voice is quiet and low, just like it was that day, and again, Orlando doesn’t feel ridiculous for taking comfort in it. “Yeah, I do. But I remember you being alright with it, well, after snorting coke on me.” 

“Okay, then you’re a moron. If you had slept with me, it wouldn’t have been awkward in the first place.”

That made more sense in his head. His mirror self arches a brow at him, so he turns around to look at Sean directly. 

The other man wraps his towel around his waist and his eyes are fixed on his fingers’ doings when he starts, 

“Did you want to –?” His eyes flick up and back down before he wraps his arms around himself. Lan tilts his head as if he could help Sean pick up his gaze from the tiles. “ – with me? Back then?”

Orlando tries to remember but fails. 

“Uh, I dunno? I’m having a few difficulties, trying to think of a time when I didn’t want to, possibly – maybe.” He scratches his head and pulls a face at his stuttering, right when Sean’s eyes meet his again.

“Now you do.” Sean says and the funny thing? There isn’t a question mark after this, it’s a statement. A clear and sure statement from someone who tends to phrase the world in half sentences and guesses. Sean’s looking at him and in his eyes Orlando can read all the self-assurance, no, all the trust in the two of them, that now makes him grin and nod maybe with a bit too much enthusiasm.

“I really, really do,” he says.

Sean’s hands are big and hot and still a little damp against Lan’s cheeks when his face is framed by them and Sean kisses him hard and with intent. The rim of the sink is pressing against the backs of Orlando’s thighs and goddamn, he curls his thumbs over Sean’s hipbones, is panting within seconds because there’s nothing, nothing sexier than Sean zeroing in on him. 

“How about – ?” murmurs Sean and pulls back the littlest bit. Orlando refuses to let him go, feels like he’s gonna suffocate if they don’t kiss again right now, if he can’t smell and taste Sean again right now, if they don’t – 

“Now,” he finishes Sean’s sentence. 

They stumble more than step out of the tiny bathroom into the living quarters of their caravan. Somehow they reach the bed unscathed but there Sean breaks the kiss again.

“Uhm,” the painter grunts with amusements, pointing at the bed, covered in a chaotic assembly of clothes, candy bars and magazines. 

“I was looking for my snorkel earlier,” Orlando explains reasonably, then he grips a corner of one of the bedspreads that peeks out underneath all the clutter and drags it, covering and everything on it, down to the floor. Sean pushes a half empty box of biscuits off his foot before dropping his towel carelessly on top of the mess.

The bright afternoon light blazes in through the window and the ever open door and sunshine always makes Orlando feel abuzz, but now more than ever. It’s broad day, he’s wide awake and when he blinks, blinks again – Sean’s still there. Naked and hard, curve of his shoulders quivering in subdued laughter.

“The snorkel, you didn’t find it, did you?” Sean asks and scratches his belly.

“Shut up,” Orlando mutters around a grin, his erection heavy and wet against his thigh. 

“’kay,” Sean replies right before his lips catch Orlando’s in another kiss. Sean’s fingers don’t tremble as they pull down his boxers, Lan hasn’t really expected them to because his don’t either and – yeah. God.

It’s a push and pull, they smile against each other’s mouths when they lie down and Orlando practically climbs Sean, the artist’s hand in the small of Orlando’s back and Lan’s hands all over Sean.

Sean.

It takes Orlando less than a minute and a half to come for the first time and Sean’s been exaggerating with his five minutes claim as well. They don’t stop kissing, even as they wipe their cum smeared hands on the sun warmed sheet and Orlando feels Sean crinkling his nose as he rolls them over, away from the icky spot. He drags Sean closer again, grunts when something pokes him in the back, but doesn’t let go of Sean. Still kissing, he reaches under himself and grasps the offending object –

“What,” he manages before Sean shuts him up again. Orlando groans, responds but pokes Sean’s shoulder. “What did you bring this into bed for?” 

Sean pulls back, looks at the brush in Orlando’s hand that has jabbed his shoulder twice already and left blue smudges. Then he lets his teeth tug lightly on Orlando’s lower lip.

“You want an answer to that?” he asks and Orlando wants to make love to his voice. “Or do you want to have sex now?”

Blindly Orlando flings the brush away and judging from the sound of things it lands right in the middle of the dirty dishes. He can concentrate on the little and important things now, like how Sean’s heart thunders when Orlando runs his thumb over his pecs, like how Sean gets a little frantic when he licks his ear, fingers gliding up and down Orlando’s back.

They kiss and laugh at how clumsy they both are, hands uncoordinated and klutzy with condom and hand lotion, because they just can’t stop kissing, keep getting distracted because their fingers want to do something else, want to explore and entwine instead. 

“Can I -?” Orlando whispers, his thighs pushing Sean’s apart. Strong hands slide down his back and Sean murmurs against his lips, “Don’t have to ask.”

Orlando knows what it’s like to be as completely single minded as Sean gets sometimes, as focused on one sole thing. 

All he can feel, smell, breathe, hear, think is Sean, Sean, Sean. 

Orlando loses track of time and place and everything that’s not Sean, lean body snug and sweaty against his own, so hot and tight around him. Erratic, his rhythm is erratic, as are Sean’s hitched breaths but their kiss is languid and wet, their licking touches are as steady as the tide. Orlando doesn’t even put up a fight when the current pulls him out and under. 

Coming makes the earth quake, both of them shiver uncontrollably and Orlando all but collapses on top of Sean.

“I’m never gonna move again,” Lan says when his heart rate has slowed down a little. He runs his hand down Sean’s side, hot and sticky where his cum is seeping down. “Good thing we got biscuits within reach. All thought of.”

“Mmm,” Sean hums in what Orlando takes as agreement and slides his leg up Lan’s side, keeping him close, inside. “Good plan.” 

His voice is a low rumble against Orlando’s ear, just like always it’s the most intimate sound Lan can imagine. He tilts his head a little, trying to get closer, and readily Sean nips at his earlobe, purrs his contentment as his arms tighten around Orlando. 

“Suppose we need to,” Orlando says, almost contemplatively, “y’know, change the rubber?”

Sean laughs quietly and the tremble of muscles beneath him does nothing to calm Orlando down. “You’re gonna insist on purple every time?” 

“I thought you’d get off on the different colours,” Orlando replies, pulls out and flops onto his back, wincing a little when he crushes the abandoned package of condoms with that. 

He feels too big for his own body as he stares up at their low ceiling. The sun has sunk low enough to bathe the confined space in an almost orange light. Small gusts of air sneak in through the door and tickle his overheated skin, dry his own sweat and Sean’s cum on his body. Slowly he licks his lips, stretches a little more so he can touch the wall of the caravan with his toes, his left arm brushing against Sean’s right. 

The mattress creaks when Sean shifts and despite the early evening with its fresh ocean breeze, it’s like some of the humidity of the day settles in Orlando’s belly. The heat strokes over his skin as Sean leans over him, hair a mess and cheeks still reddened from the exertion, blue paint like an abstract tattoo on his shoulder.

***

So yeah, about those French conversations and audio dramas. Orlando had this ghost story on cassette that creeped him the hell out when he was about eight. But when he listened to it again later he didn’t get the hype at all. Instead of being fond of childhood memories he called eight-year-old Orlando an idiot and that was that. Thinking about it, he has told Sean about the audio drama, even did different voices when he reenacted parts of it for good measures. Sean spilt half of his beer because of it, so he smelled of booze for the rest of the evening. 

He got off from work early today and used the spare time to buy bananas and milk (which was all Sean wrote onto the grocery list), and a new pair of sunglasses since he lost his in the ocean. The shopping district is close to the beach – many opportunities to buy last-minute sunscreen and snacks – and when you walk along the promenade at sundown, it’s outrageously romantic as long as you ignore the truckloads of tourists thinking the same thing.

He finds Sean sitting with his feet dangling from the edge of the promenade, leaned back on his elbows and a cigarette between his lips. He looks sweaty and when Orlando sits down next to him, he smells of the sea.

“Been to the harbour?” Orlando asks by way of greeting. “You smell like Callie made you scrub his deck.” 

“I thought I wasn’t supposed to do anything but paint with my hands?” Sean mumbles around the stub, and pinches his eyes as he looks into the sun. He doesn’t avert his gaze when Orlando covers his hand on the pavement with his own. Green eyes still follow the reflection of the light on the water but Sean entwines their fingers readily.

“I said that?” Orlando asks. He steals the fag and the painter watches him silently as he takes a pleasurable drag before slipping the cigarette back between Sean’s lips. “Must’ve been way before I knew what else your hands were good for.”

Sean savours the last drag and then flicks his cigarette into the sand below their feet. “Coulda told you that long ago.”

“Shoulda,” Lan agrees, then shrugs. “Moronic, as I’ve said. It should always have been you.“ 

Sean looks at him for a long moment, and it’s like they’re a thousand miles away, on another beach where people voluntarily eat oysters. Then he grins broadly, that kind of smile that always makes Orlando beam in return even if he has no idea why he’s suddenly jittery with happiness. 

“Yeah,” Sean laughs, “That it would’ve landed me in jail shouldn’t count.” 

Orlando wishes he could cup the quiet lightness in Sean’s voice, his breathing, in his palms and tuck it away safely. That sounds a bit over the top, don’t it? He figures he’s probably entitled to it, because he’s eighteen and well, the sunset, the ocean and all really are ridiculously romantic, so there. 

“You’re the king of pillow talk,” Orlando replies.

From up close he witnesses small laugh lines appear around Sean’s eyes again. 

“I am, aren’t I?”

Orlando worries his lower lip a little, not really trying to hold back his silliest of smiles. The painter shifts a little, readjusting his weight on his elbows, and his thumb caresses Orlando’s pinkie when he squints up at him.

“I love you, yeah?” Lan says affirmatively.

 

****

**1994, August**

Lately I’ve discovered one thing. See, before I was all about the ‘what if’ kind of big life changing plan things – and I can come up with really rather amazing plots for lives, I should maybe become a romance novel writer. I could live in this house on the beach, have people doing the laundry for me while I sit and ponder about synonyms for happily ever after. Sean could be my gardener or no, I know - the illustrator for my stories and we’d have heated discussions with paper strewn all over my huge desk on the patio.

But anyway. With those big things it’s like with dreams. You’re having a real good one and are happy about the pictures forming inside your head but when you try to look closer it all becomes really blurry. You’re left with nothing but that kinda sore taste in your mouth like when you’ve forgotten to brush your teeth before you go to bed.

Now, let me tell you what the really important things are: It’s the little details. In that fantasy there were loads of papers on our table - it’s only a good thing if there’s something written on them. Or if the person doing the laundry has a name that maybe Sean can’t pronounce when he’s complaining that the colour stains haven’t been washed out of his favourite shirt. Because those things? Would make it real.

It’s about the little things, the real things, yeah? 

If you want to make Crêpe, you first gotta mix the eggs and the flour. Don’t put the milk in yet, or the dough won’t smoothen out and certain people (who should be grateful that you cook for them because they can’t even prepare a sandwich for themselves) complain about the clumpiness. 

Pierre says that you stop being a tourist once you don’t ogle postcard stands any longer. I wonder if that’ll ever happen to me – or if there’s maybe different rules for postcards with girls in bikinis on them?

Out of the twelve tables Pierre has outside of his restaurant only three can actually stand without wobbling. I’m not sure whether that’s because of the cobble stone or because of the slightly dented metal frames they have. In any case we solve the problem by propping them up with coasters. If I haven’t had the time to do it, Sean spends a good deal of his lazy arse afternoon with one of his feet on the horizontal bar, making the table go clangclang on the pavement, just to annoy me. Pierre says I’m not supposed to throw little bags of sugar at customers. So I do it when he isn’t looking.

There is a dancing girl on the Franc coins. Funny how it’s already difficult to remember for me what’s on our pound but then I didn’t really spend any time in a phone booth back home, talking to Mom (but was mainly just avoiding her). So, now I know what’s pictured on France’s currency, how high I can pile francs on top of the coin phone until the tower collapses, and how fast they grow warm in my hand while Mom’s going on about her cold feet.

I accidentally bought Menthol fags. It’s kinda like smoking chewing gum, I’m not sure yet whether that’s a good thing. Sean doesn’t own an ashtray for whatever reason. When he’s smoking on the balcony he stubs his fags into one of the window boxes that by now looks like a little graveyard for deceased Silk Cuts. While painting he uses empty tea mugs, which if you ask me is rather disgusting.

My skateboard has a Maya totem thing painted onto the underside of the deck. Don’t know whether that’s all that good because whenever I fall I see that grinning God looking down at me, taunting me as if the crash was his doing (stupid steps on the market place).

I lost my copy of ‘Ten’ which is a real shame. Bad enough that Pearl Jam canceled their summer tour but now I don’t even have the album any longer. Sean offered to sing the songs for me, he says the ten million times I played them got him to memorize the lyrics. He has a super shitty singing voice though. I kinda wanna drug him with a burger like Hannibal does with B.A., buy tickets for a flight to Seattle and fly him out. Just to show him how you properly sing ‘Oceans’ live.

Madame Nicolas, that’s my landlady, is the only person I know who voluntarily has an asymmetrical haircut. It’s cool for a sixty something person even though I’m still glad that I grew out my Mohawk.

It takes me exactly four minutes and thirty six seconds to get from my place to Sean’s. That’s only about half the time I need to get to Emile and a third of the time it takes me to get to Arnaud. Though I figure my watch might be broken (I’ve had it since I was ten) – yesterday for instance, I needed to tell Sean that an A-Team rerun was on telly and I’m pretty sure it was much more than 276 seconds until I reached his place…

Isn’t it cool that here in France instead of pudding you get chunks of cheese for dessert? I’ve learned about fifty new French words this week of which the best is ‘fromagerie’ which means cheese factory. My favourite non French word of the week is ‘scumbling’ because it has scum in it. Also, because Sean does this funny “I’m concentrating and my tongue is sticking out” thing when he gets out the dry brush to get the blotchy look onto his canvas. 

There is a button missing on my bedcovering and I am certain it was still there last week. Who goes around and steals buttons of all things?

Last weekend, Sean made friends with a little girl, well at first with her mom really. I guess she was alright too but honestly who puts on full make up for a day bumming at the beach? Anyway, the girl was a sweetheart and Sean drew an ace sea horse for her, big softie that he is. First time I heard that he took sketching courses in art school. It feels like something I should’ve known.

We have all these little permanent carnivals here which are awesome. It never gets old, cotton candy on a daily basis. The best one is the one directly at the promenade that has a Ferris wheel for kids that constantly gets stuck. Yesterday it took them an hour to get it running again. So, what you do if you’re five years old, suspended in the air and really really need to have a slash?

Sean still only reads British newspapers. You’d think it was because he doesn’t trust the foreign press, if he weren’t reading The Sun. As long as the footie results are correct he doesn’t care that Lady Di’s hairdo is not actually more important than the Eurotunnel. He’s still mostly drinking PG tips, too.

The perfect in-between-surfing snack is a banana. It comes with all the healthy shit I need to stay focused and nature even gift wraps it. Though I really shouldn’t carry it in the back pocket of my shorts, forget about it and then sit down on Sean’s sofa. It’s not like one more stain on that thing matters - there’s even a complete handprint of his right hand in bright red on one of the armrests – but squishy banana mush pretty quickly seeps through clothes. Though not as fast as Sean is hiccupping with laughter.

My shower was broken (again; it’s like the universe wants me to reek), so I had to use Sean’s and I forgot my yellow bathrobe at his place. Later I found a firelighter, half a roll of fruit Mentos, a sock and an almost empty tube of aquamarine in the pockets. Even though he hasn’t painted anything blue for at least four weeks. Hm.

I think by now I would need about three large boxes if I wanted to pack up all my stuff. It’s quite amazing ‘cause I have no idea where all this shit is coming from. For example, why do I own a Transformers alarm clock, an application for a life insurance, or a book called ‘Candid ou l’optimisme’? Who names their kid Candid anyway?

If I keep things that I noticed a secret, for no one to know, does that make them less real? Because there’s no one to talk to about them? Say, the freckles on Sean’s shoulder blades. They’re only there when he’s been in the sun for a good long while, and only if you look really closely. As if they’re shy or something. I don’t know whether there’s anyone but me seeing them, don’t know whether I want anyone to either.

Since last week Emile has a tat with the Superman logo on his left upper arm. He’s not allowed to surf for four weeks now, the nitwit. I really want a tattoo, too, but I’m definitely gonna get it only after the season is over. In December or something.

So, all these things? They’re simple and they’re true. If I were an artist (one of those who thinks that colours alone aren’t artistic enough) I would prolly treat them like paper clippings, plaster them all onto a canvas and create a big and meaningful composition. Probably earn buckets of money with that shit, too. But there you are, I’m not an artist. So I guess I’ll just collect all these things in my head until it explodes one day. Boom, brain goo splattering everywhere, heh.

Simple and true.

Sean says that that’s the perfect combination for absolute wisdom. Mind, he said that when he was talking about his love for his ever losing crappy club. But that doesn’t make him wrong, does it?

Oh, and some more?

Sean and I talked about a lot of important things this week, the lengthiest of discussions was about who rocked most on the A-team. It's Hannibal obviously but Sean wouldn't see that and kept bringing up stupid arguments to go for Murdoch. When I just laughed at him he shoved me and I landed in the spray. I'm never having discussions about such important matters with him when close to the ocean. 

The ocean really turns silver right before sun up. I know it sounds kitschy but that's the absolute truth. Makes me wanna sit down in the sand and go half way blind staring at the sun. Sean says it's more like quicksilver and that'd come in handy, temperature taking and all, once I got a heat stroke from sitting on the beach for too long.

Emile tried to explain the rules of American football to me after surfing. I suppose he whacked himself over the head with his board, I have no idea why else he coulda gotten the idea I wanted to know the difference between a running back and a wide receiver. Surfing doesn't automatically turn you into some California poster boy - well, it does if you ask Emile that's for sure. What is wrong with rugby or, you know, proper footie?

Arnaud told me the most awesome joke. So, there is a cow, a girl and a taxi... no, wait, a cow, a girl and a helicopter... damnit. Why is it that of all things you're darn sure to forget the good jokes right away? It's like a curse or something. Anyway, I may not remember the pun line itself, but believe me it was hilarious - I nearly pissed myself when Arnaud told it to me and again when I told Sean. I kinda suck at telling jokes, I suppose, it's not too good to choke on your own laughter and become all incoherent.

Sean keeps sugar cubes in a coffee cup. He has a pint glass in his bathroom for mouthwash. On his balcony there are about a thousand empty Orangina bottles he constantly forgets to get rid off. I suppose when you're able to create the most amazing, breathtaking artwork, all your senses zero in on that and you don't need to focus on anything else, right? When the palm tree that came with my room grew too big, he repotted it for me and used an old mayo bucket from the restaurant.

I have a blue toothbrush. I suppose all the different colours they got in the Intermarche come in really handy if you flat share with, say, 20 other people. 'Hey, no one touch the pink sparkly one or I'll kill ya with poisoned mouth wash.' - Sean has a yellow one (the one he actually uses for, y'know, brushing his teeth and not for painting).

Last week I witnessed something super rare: Sean having done his laundry. I had different theories about him and his clothes before (they range from just buying new ones to hanging them out on his balcony to 'air out') but what do you know, he actually washes them! Mind, he doesn't own a clothes horse so he sorta decorated them all over his flat - chairs, table, the fridge, his easels - where they stayed for the rest of the week (no surprise there). I kinda stole his grey t-shirt with the hole right under the neckline but that was just because I dropped by after surfing and forgot to bring my own shirt. I don't really intent to give it back though, to be honest.

Montpellier smells of lavender. Sure, there are other smells as well - fried eggs, salt water, paint solvent - but around every corner they got lavender bushes, soap smells of it and you even make tea out of it. I suppose it's rather good for tourism to be associated with lavender smell and not with, say, the stench of rotting garbage when the rubbish collection guys are on strike again.

It's a bit embarrassing but I'm running around with two scraped knees and one scraped elbow (the right). It's the stupid cobble stone that trips me over constantly, and the uneven pavement, too. By now, the old scab just breaks off and I have blood running down my shin every other day. It kinda looks like the really expensive red wine at Pierre's. Or Sean's favourite burgundy red acrylics. I'm, like, a rather clumsy piece of art come to life.

After what? Over a year in France I finally figured out their system for license plates! The numbers stand for the département and it's really rather obvious once you got behind it. Sean and I both agree that we want our future Rovers and whatnot registered in the USA though because their license plate system rocks. I wonder what Sean'll do if SHEFUNIT and ♥BLADES are already allotted in all 50 states.

Sand gets bloody everywhere. If I wash my feet in the spray they're all sandy again once I got back onto the promenade and I keep carrying whole buckets of it in my pockets back into my room. A bit annoying at times I can tell you that. But wanna know something? When I wake up in the morning and the sun hasn't even risen, I still know where I am - in France and the beach - because of the sand on my sheets. That's neat.

I had a few quid to spare (comes from stealing fags from Sean, heh) and bought a throw away camera. It's like a lucky bag when getting the pictures developed and half of my first batch was a blurry combination of Sean's work in progress and of blue something which I suppose was the ocean. The other half shows Sean asleep with the ugly orange cat on his belly, and the awesome salad I made.

Notable flotsam count of the week is the following: One head of a Barbie, a rotten miniature shark (I think), four bottles - one with an ominous paperroll in them, a pair of porn star sunglasses and a single swimmie. If that's all the ocean has to offer I sure as hell will cross ‘treasure hunter’ of my dream job list.

Arnaud said they did a job evaluation thing at school (he's supposed to become a coroner according to them) which got me thinking. Can you really do a ticky box test that tells you your future? I mean isn't that rather a lot like these toothless women with crystal balls? Sure, some people are destined to do something and that only. You just gotta take a look at Sean's hands to know that. Me? I dunno there's not really a job I can see myself sticking to or even just coming back to over and over again. Sean says I don't have to anyhow, that's good enough for me. Definitely better than ticky boxes.

****

**2005, August**

“I like the one in the corner,” Orlando remarks and pokes the sketchpad with a salty-sandy finger.

The paper is already messy and curls on the edges but Sean still growls lightly at him. He doesn’t shave that often, wears mismatching socks (not right now, that would be silly with 35 in the shade) but he looks after his material. But well, since Lan looks after him Sean figures he’s allowed to add something to the paper as well. Ballpoint, scribbles, sand.

“Y’know, you should draw a comic book with us in it.”

“Right,” Sean grunts and his gaze retraces the lines of the sun tattoo on the paper. “And the plot would be what exactly?”

Orlando walks around the bed until he’s in Sean’s eye line then he stretches luxuriously and a little too slowly. The artist’s pencil stills as he appreciates the small darkly tanned strip of belly and tattoo revealed for him. 

“Obviously I have some kind of superpower and spend my days heroically saving your arse.” Orlando says readily, as Sean expected him to. “From, y’know, accidentally poisoning yourself by eating oil paint.”

“Uh huh. What kind of superpower’d that be…” Sean frowns in fake concentration as he darkens the neckline of Orlando’s simple white t-shirt on the paper. After a too long moment he concludes, “I got nothing.”

Orlando huffs and Sean hears the mock pout in his voice, “Thanks a lot. You could at least have said that I’m, I dunno, world class at sucking cock.” Lan draws the white curtains closed to shut out the brightest of afternoon lights. He raises his arm and sniffs his armpit then he flops down on the bed next to the painter.

Sean looks up, the filtered sunlight so gentle on Orlando’s face. “There’s that. Dunno whether that helps against global warming and economic crisis though.”

“Only one way to find out,” Lan says and his fingers trace the back of Sean’s right hand. “I gotta get it on with a few people aside from you…”

“Yeah,” Sean mutters, “I’m kinda against that plan.”

Orlando leans closer, presses his nose lightly against Sean’s cheek. “You don’t say,” he mocks tenderly.

Sean smiles and rolls his chewed on pencil stub between his fingers. “Got something else for ye,” he says. “Superpower – You have the sun shining out of your arse, paralyzing evil-doers with rays of joy.” 

A short barking laugh is the response. “So basically you’re saying I fart world peace.” Lan says and runs his hand over his ultra short hair, a compulsive gesture, leftover from days of long strands and dark curls.

“Basically,” Sean agrees. He doesn’t protest when Orlando gives the sketchpad on his knee a shove so it slides off, tumbles to the floor next to the bed.

“I dig that,” Orlando drawls as he straddles Sean’s thighs. He smells of sweat, salt water, cigarette smoke. “You say the sweetest things.”

“You’re most welcome,” Sean licks the strong chin he’s just drawn.

 

****

**2006**

Orlando is a restless spirit. He is always looking out for new things, life is short and the world is so big, there are so many bridges to spit off of, so many ways to curl his tongue around ‘this is awesome, Sean’ in another language. But sometimes he gets really restless, can’t sit still and gets this feverish unsteady look. “Like I’m under witness protection and the bloody mafia is closing in on me,” he says, and continues chipping the table edge with his pocket knife, “though I could totally take Al Capone in a fight, he’s a short-arse.”

Sean has different ways of reacting. Sometimes he buys ice cream and enters the room with saying that ManU are a disgrace, so Orlando can rant at him for two hours straight, get it out of his system. Sometimes he tells Orlando to get a fucking grip on reality and do the dishes instead of whinging. Sometimes he gets them out of their clothes and in smooth afternoon light does things that make Orlando lose all focus, let Lan regain it in post coital clarity when artist’s fingertips caress his bruised lips. Sometimes he buys two flight tickets, destination anywhere.

****

**2011, May**

Art Monthly / May 2011  
PASSING THROUGH  
An interview with Sean Bean

When I heard that Sean Bean was back in town I put forth a request for an interview. I didn’t expect a reply. Bean is not exactly known for his active participation in the scene. He has a habit to vanish from the face of the earth for long periods of time and only the steady appearance of oversized archaic acrylic paintings proves that he is still alive. And when he shows up at an exhibition, his sun bleached hair and maybe an arm in plaster are the only clues to what he is been up to.

So, I didn’t expect a response but I got an affirmative email within a day, including the address of a little corner café in Belsize Park. 

It is on a sunny afternoon that I meet up with Bean. Seated at a small table with two tea cups on it he is dressed in a well worn blue jumper and jeans that care to be comfortable rather than to make an impression. He has a pad propped up on his knee and is busy sketching. When I introduce myself, his hand keeps on drawing for a few moments as if on its own. Then he looks up, too long fringe in his eyes, and offers me a smile, a firm handshake and a chair. 

We start at the beginning. Yes, he still has a British passport, is from Sheffield to be more accurate, the dirtiest and most charming shithole. Yes, he went to school in London and graduated with a series of portrays in surrealist tradition. Answers that are widely known and he is aware of it, too. 

He is accommodating enough and seems relaxed. But he is more interested in the menu and which blend of tea to order for us than his early years as a struggling artist in the 1980s. True to the ageold cliché he only fully pays attention once we have covered that and move to the more important things. 

The one and only important thing, if you are a purist.

“Let’s talk about your art,” I suggest and for the first time his green eyes fully focus on me. “Did you always want to become an artist?”

"Well, no, when I was six I wanted to be James Bond,” he laughs but then shakes his head. He looks at his right hand, taps long fingers onto the tabletop and then says, “I can’t really say I ever made a conscious decision about it. I don’t know whether I could’ve done something else and found it fulfilling enough. Maybe. I always liked to draw, to paint, and it was something I was good at. So yes, I suppose so.”

"Could you tell me about your latest series of paintings and what you are trying to achieve with them?" 

He rubs his chin as if the mere suggestion of painting makes his fingertips tingle, then states, "The latest ones are combinations of reds and blues, different shades but simple forms. The anti-orange if you will. I couldn’t say that there’s something I’m trying to achieve with that. If you can relate to it and see something in it, then it's there. Whether that’s, say, the Union Flag or Chamisso’s blue flower, it’s all fine by me." 

"The subject isn’t important to you? So, you paint mainly to express yourself?”

He carefully pours milk into his steaming tea and his voice is soft and measured when he responds, "I don't look at a finished painting and see myself in it if that's what you mean. I play with what's already there, what's on my mind. It gets things out of my system. It's satisfying to do, liberating at times.” 

When asked about a few of his older works he readily explains the techniques he used, as long as he still remembers them. The mentioning of the diversity some paintings caused between the critics amuses him – the dispute about his series in red and grey in particular, about the possibility of hope and despair. He acts surprised but listens intently to the debate’s summary. Either interpretation is fine by him, every gesture, every smile, even every inquiry repeats unmistakably. 

“What kind of working place do you prefer?” 

“I think I’m pretty flexible there. I prefer painting in a proper studio with enough space because I usually work on different pieces at a time and it’s bothersome to have to put one away to work on another. But really, anywhere. Living room, kitchen, garage. Outside, if it doesn’t rain. I reckon open air’d be my favourite.”

He stretches in the afternoon’s warmth, and it is easy to picture him in some backyard with enough space for his canvases under undistorted sunlight. 

"Tell me something more about the process of creating a painting.” 

“It differs. Sometimes, it’s eliminating what works and what doesn’t and I spend quite a while trying to come up with a concept that suits me. But most of the times I just start with a colour I like and see where that takes me. Keep adding layers, change things until it looks familiar.” 

He is about to add something but we are interrupted. 

A man has stepped out of the steady stream of people walking by and now halts at our table, placing a hand on Bean’s shoulder by way of greeting. He is strikingly handsome, in his thirties, skin as darkly tanned as the artist‘s and wears a smile very similar to Bean’s as well. It broadens when the dog he has brought with him half jumps into the painter’s lap in happy excitement. 

Sitting down on the free chair at our table the dark haired man introduces himself simply as Orlando – no last name, not considered necessary – before he takes a large sip out of Bean’s cup of tea. He and Bean exchange a few half sentences about the contents of the younger man’s shopping bags, then about which cake to have. After placing his order Orlando pulls out a travel brochure and promptly delves into it. 

The painter gently pushes the dog’s paws off his thighs and otherwise doesn’t bat an eye at any of the commotion. Elucidation from his perspective would evidently be as ridiculous as asking the sun for a justification of its appearance in the morning.

I therefore prompt, “You were talking about how a painting comes together?” 

“It is a bit like being in a foreign country and asking for directions,” he says. “No one really understands what you want from them and you end up in places that you didn't really set out to be. It's a bit annoying at times, not knowing the short cuts and getting lost quite often. But mostly, I end up being rather at ease with the locals, so to speak."

When he sees me reacting with a smile, a mirror image of it appears on his face. He enjoys the comparison he has found, likes to be likeable. 

"That is an interesting metaphor you chose. You do travel quite a lot, don’t you? You just came from Thailand, what was it so appealing to you?”

“We didn’t plan to stay for that long initially,” he says and the plural form automatically includes the younger man who is still engrossed in his reading material and his Chelsea bun. Smoothly Bean changes to singular again, “And I know it sounds like a bunch of clichés but Thailand’s such a lovely country. The people are incredibly welcoming and the culture – there are so many possible parallels to our own and so many differences as well. A year is hardly enough for all of that.”

He talks with the enthusiasm of a globetrotter and yet there is no nervous twitch of muscles, no edginess to any of his motions. Just like he trusts his artwork to speak for itself, the quiet passion with which he talks about Asia and then North America (they spent four years there and left more by accident than intent, he says) reflects a state of mind that is essentially optimistic. 

“To what extent do the different locations influence your work?" 

"I wouldn’t say that I took this bit of Thai culture and transformed it into that painting. I’d be really in over my head if I attempted to juggle thousands of years of culture. It’s natural that you react to a certain atmosphere surrounding you, isn’t it? To what happens in your world." 

"Do you find it easy to focus once you started painting? Or do you willingly have to block out the rest of the world?”

"The world?" 

"The distractions it provides,” I specify. “Noise or other people, personal problems, finances."

"If money’s tight I do commission pieces,” he replies, picking the most tangible problem out of the choices offered to him. The coward’s way out one might say. “If not that, then there’s always proper work. Haven’t done that in a bit though."

"And has any of this ever interfered with your art?" 

He looks thoughtful. "Not recently.” 

His two mumbled words are the shortest answer he has given me so far and they need to be questioned. There is a reason for why there are so many starving artists - they can't afford the distraction, end up cut off from their muses. Most tend to live with anguish, seek it out even because they need it. It’s at the core of any art – the panic of failing, the rush comparable to heroin when the last stroke is done, the fear of how the creation is received by peers and public – and it seeps into every day life as well.

Bean looks at me steadily, chewing on a strawberry scone. Crumbs of it decorate his jumper and he is waiting for the next question, considers the last more than sufficiently answered. He holds his sticky scone loosely with long fingers with nails chewed down to the quick. If there is something more to this little detail then he doesn’t share; but his apparent serenity tells that this is a man who knows his worth. 

"How is the every day life of an artist?" 

Bean replies with a grin, “I get up, I paint, I go to sleep.” 

“You forgot something,” Orlando murmurs. It is the first thing that he says after his arrival and he doesn’t look up from his magazine as if he doesn’t even notice that he has said it out loud. 

Knowing amusement crinkles Bean’s eyes as he turns his head towards the younger man, and with the same relaxed and off the record rumble he agrees, “Oh, aye, eating and shagging.”

Orlando is smiling but still has his eyes trained on his brochure when he corrects, “Cleaning up your brushes is what I meant.”

Bean chuckles lowly, then his shoulders straighten a little again, professional charm back in place and directed at me. He rubs his nose with his thumb and explains, “I don’t always remember all the other things that need to be done, laundry and stuff. But I’m rather careful with my working material, a bit meticulous if you will.”

Following this angle I ask, “So, it is not that easy to live with the artist either?”

“Sometimes I guess,” Bean nods. “Like when Lan packed all the suitcases the night before a flight and I ended up randomly unpacking half of them again, looking for my charcoal.”

Orlando drops the brochure on the table, onto Bean’s sketch pad, and responds with humour in his voice, “Well, it was a bit dense to put that with underwear and shoes, wasn’t it." 

"Or, when I decide on a whim that I don't like spinach any longer,” Bean offers, looking at him, “when you actually managed to successfully cook something?"

"Define 'successful',” Orlando deadpans. “But speaking of, you mean like that time when you got so wrapped up in a project that I didn't get laid for a month and a half?"

Bean blinks. "Wait. That never happened.” 

Orlando manages to keep a straight face for two seconds before he starts cackling quietly. Bean’s smile is a little crooked, a lot affectionate.

This seems to be a conversation they have had many times before. But it is not the kind of banter that eats away at the substance like acid; it's a play - turning something that initially might have had the potential for tragedy into something distinctly comical. It’s a gift, not only overcoming differences but being able to laugh at their memory. When I ask whether I can quote this exchange Orlando has already pulled another brochure out of a bag, Bean merely shrugs and nods. 

Then he asks, “What was the question again?”

“How is the every day life of an artist?” I repeat.

He replies with the conviction formed of a decades old routine. “There's nothing particularly interesting about painting, I suppose. A bit more leeway for doing things your own pace, but there is nothing really exciting about cleaning your brushes or trying to remember where you put your sketchpad."

What he has just played down as simple working chores are the origin of these uncompromising convulsions, these eruptions of colour on canvas that dominate the viewer’s thoughts and feelings, whether one wants it or not. 

“How do you handle the business side of being an artist?”

“Badly,” he laughs and it is the first straight out lie he has told me, nonchalant charm practically oozing from him. “I'm crap at that. If I can talk him into it, I let Lan do it, make arrangements and all that.”

“So, you’d prefer private collections over public exhibitions?”

“No, I appreciate the reaction my pictures get. It’s great to know that people can relate to them.” His reply is smooth and sincere and there is that habitual gesture again, he rubs his nose with his thumb as he looks down, a small smile on his lips. “Of course it’s wonderful to hear when it’s more than just one person.”

And still he would rather just paint (which is what he is deliberately not saying) and spend the rest of the time on some beach in some country, in a temple in Asia, or on a hacienda in Spain. As expressively disturbing his artwork is as comfortably tranquil the man seems. Let other people, or someone in particular, take care of things.

“What is your next project going to be?” I ask. “What are your plans for the future?” 

He leans back in his chair and his entire posture says that he might just spend the next month sitting in cafés and getting crumbs all over himself. His dog’s tail thumps against my leg as he feeds it the last remains of his scone. Then he tilts his head so he can look at the cover of Orlando’s current brochure. A kangaroo is staring back at him.

“Australia?” he says, trying the word out on his tongue. 

Orlando’s face appears from behind the magazine. 

“Or Greece maybe?” Bean adds and Orlando’s eyebrows are raised in interest. 

The range of brochures on the table offers Brazil, Greenland, Russia, Greece; colourful advertising like honey to a bee, and it doesn’t seem decided at all at this point. 

Bean shrugs with one shoulder and looks at me again. “We’ll be in London for the time of the Saatchi exhibition. But other than that, I’m not big on making plans for the future. Make the best out of it when it’s there.”

“Carpe diem?” I translate. 

He chuckles, knowing that this is another ageold cliché even if a good one to end an interview with.

“Yeah, suppose,” he rumbles and grins when Orlando drops brochure of the Mediterranean into his lap and the dog instantly sniffs at it. 

Obliging, charming and a side of indifferent. 

Not the man you would imagine behind the intimidating, ingenious paintings.

 

****

**2005, August**

“I like the one in the corner,” Orlando remarks and pokes the sketchpad with a salty-sandy finger.

The paper is already messy and curls on the edges but Sean still growls lightly at him. He doesn’t shave that often, wears mismatching socks (not right now, that would be silly with 35 in the shade) but he looks after his material. But well, since Lan looks after him Sean figures he’s allowed to add something to the paper as well. Ballpoint, scribbles, sand.

“Y’know, you should draw a comic book with us in it.”

“Right,” Sean grunts and his gaze retraces the lines of the sun tattoo on the paper. “And the plot would be what exactly?”

Orlando walks around the bed until he’s in Sean’s eye line then he stretches luxuriously and a little too slowly. The artist’s pencil stills as he appreciates the small darkly tanned strip of belly and tattoo revealed for him. 

“Obviously I have some kind of superpower and spend my days heroically saving your arse.” Orlando says readily, as Sean expected him to. “From, y’know, accidentally poisoning yourself by eating oil paint.”

“Uh huh. What kind of superpower’d that be…” Sean frowns in fake concentration as he darkens the neckline of Orlando’s simple white t-shirt on the paper. After a too long moment he concludes, “I got nothing.”

Orlando huffs and Sean hears the mock pout in his voice, “Thanks a lot. You could at least have said that I’m, I dunno, world class at sucking cock.” Lan draws the white curtains closed to shut out the brightest of afternoon lights. He raises his arm and sniffs his armpit then he flops down on the bed next to the painter.

Sean looks up, the filtered sunlight so gentle on Orlando’s face. “There’s that. Dunno whether that helps against global warming and economic crisis though.”

“Only one way to find out,” Lan says and his fingers trace the back of Sean’s right hand. “I gotta get it on with a few people aside from you…”

“Yeah,” Sean mutters, “I’m kinda against that plan.”

Orlando leans closer, presses his nose lightly against Sean’s cheek. “You don’t say,” he mocks tenderly.

Sean smiles and rolls his chewed on pencil stub between his fingers. “Got something else for ye,” he says. “Superpower – You have the sun shining out of your arse, paralyzing evil-doers with rays of joy.” 

A short barking laugh is the response. “So basically you’re saying I fart world peace.” Lan says and runs his hand over his ultra short hair, a compulsive gesture, leftover from days of long strands and dark curls.

“Basically,” Sean agrees. He doesn’t protest when Orlando gives the sketchpad on his knee a shove so it slides off, tumbles to the floor next to the bed.

“I dig that,” Orlando drawls as he straddles Sean’s thighs. He smells of sweat, salt water, cigarette smoke. “You say the sweetest things.”

“You’re most welcome,” Sean licks the strong chin he’s just drawn.

****

**2011, September**

Sean is pretty certain that he is going to have a sore bum come tonight. The cobble stone gets a little less even yet. Yep, definitely bruising. And he has lost Lan. Hm. He gets off the bike and holds it with his left while he rubs his bum with his right. He accidentally pokes his hand with the pencil that’s stuck in his backpocket and absentmindedly sucks on the ball of his thumb, tasting of copper and graphite and his own sweat.

No sign of Lan’s bright orange t-shirt anywhere but that just means that he’s more than ten metres away, this town is as messily organized as one of Lan’s drawers. The water lazily flowing below his feet is bottle green and Sean watches a Coke paper cup bob on its surface until it disappears under the bridge. Boats are tied to the rim of the canal, small ones with shabby and mismatching colours that every souvenir painter would even out. Lan has said that the grachten are a popular burial ground for stolen bikes. Sean squints at the water but it’s too murky to make anything out underneath. He leans his own ride against the rusty banister and dutifully locks it up. He has always been more of a pedestrian, has Sean.

He is hopelessly lost and his skin is crawling a little due to the upcoming rain. He picks a nice looking street that is still fully graced with the afternoon sun and soon enough finds a tourist shop. He buys cigarettes and carefully chooses a few postcards that Lan will like and over that he forgets to buy a map of Amsterdam. It doesn’t really matter because he is not much of a map reader anyway; planned cities with their straight vertical and horizontal lines bore him and the ones with an old town and natural growth look abstract and all too distractingly interesting to the artist’s eye. And what does he need a map for. Lan himself is a compass who inevitably gravitates back to Sean like he was the North pole.

He spends a bit of time staring up old merchant houses and tries to memorize the odd shapes of their fronts. He ends up sitting on the stairs of some monument, the sun is too hot in his neck as he doodles this and that onto the backs of Lan’s postcards – the face of an old priest limping by, weeds sneaking past the tightly hugging cobble stone. 

Thunder rolls and he waits out the first shower in a church nearby. He can hear the heavy waterdrops on the roof and against the windows; in the solemn silence of the large building he hears Lan’s inevitable cussing over the rain only in his head. Lan is rather predictable that way, or at least to Sean he is. He always learns a handful of cusswords even as they are still on the plane – “Just in case I need them.” Sean is certain that he has only developed such an aversion against rain so he can use them at all every once in a while. Because there is not much else that can raise Orlando’s hackles. Sean is sure that right now, as the splatter is lessening, Lan is already back on his bike and only regrets that he can’t put Sean up onto the handlebar to reenact that scene from “Butch Cassidy”. Sean’s laughter echoes in the great hall of the church.

The sun is shining again, shimmering in newly born puddles that Sean’s feet don’t really try to avoid. His right shoe must be holey, his sock is a little damp as he stuffs a fresh set of postcards into the backpocket of his jeans. 

He strolls through the next narrow street and blinking neon lights do their job as they lure him into a coffeeshop. They don’t have any beer, says the pretty blond lass with a pierced nose, so he orders a coffee and blindly places his finger onto the menu she has placed onto the sticker covered counter. ‘Blueberry’ – the name makes him smile, as does the weed that is called thus. He hasn’t really planned to get stoned, his day has been drifting enough on its own. But the fruity smell and the taste of the weed makes itself comfortable in his belly and in his mind. He smokes, drinks his coffee and talks to a German half and a Dutchman probably double his age; football naturally.

When his mobile buzzes in his pocket, he fishes it out, cup still in his hand, joint still between his lips.

“Mm?” 

“Hey.” Orlando sounds as clear as if he stood behind Sean.

“I lost you,” Sean says.

“I noticed that,” Lan’s voice rings with amusement. “I went to the Rembrandt museum without you.”

“Liar,” answers Sean with a grin on his face so broad, he has grab the joint to keep it from falling down.

“Yeah,” Orlando admits easily, “I was on a flea market instead. Hey, I bought a traffic sign.”

“Very useful. Did you get food? I’m starving.” Sean puffs out smoke and rubs his belly.

“Really?” Orlando asks with mock seriousness. Sean is always hungry. “Where are you anyway?”

Sean blinks and when he scratches his head he nearly singes his hair. “Where am I?” he echoes, looking at the German and the Dutchman. The old man gestures him to hand over the phone, explains to Orlando. From where he sits, Sean can see the church and a road sign that points towards the urinals.

Lan is laughing when he gets his mobile back, and he cradles it closer to his ear. “So, the red light district, yeah? I should be able to find that.”

“There is a neon palm tree in the window,” Sean supplies helpfully.

“Sounds classy, Sean,” Orlando chuckles and there’s the quiet squeaking sound of his bike in the background. “I’ll come to you.”

“Aye,” Sean says and leans his head back. One of the ceiling lights is flickering. “Don’t fall into a canal.”

 

****

**2001**

He is running, spray at his naked feet, wet sand under them. The air feels salty and cleansing in his throat, like inhaling steam when he has a cold. He is running that bit too fast, breathing that little bit too irregularly; his muscles, his lungs have started to strain long ago and man, this ache is a welcome distraction. Its acid like nature manages to etch away the vile taste in his mouth, smoothens out the ragged structure of his thoughts.

He runs until the sun comes up. Its teasing golden shimmer beyond the horizon has been there for half an hour or so. When it turns the waves into silver, heats the morning air up just like that, he starts to sweat despite the wind, feels weary instead of angry. He stops and plops onto his bum right there. 

He can’t tell when exactly the conversation derailed. It started with him coming home late and Sean still lazing about and watching crap on the telly and it ended in a train wreck. And even though it’s hard to say what precisely the argument was about he is still somewhat mad at Sean. 

Some of the more daring waves manage to crawl up the beach right up to his toes now and he stretches out his legs to make it easier for them. The sun tiptoes up the sky and he really only notices it because it gets hotter, his body is catching up with the heat generated by his run, and he’s sweating like a bitch; hungry and thirsty and tired most of all. His thoughts mimic the wordless back and forth of the tide. 

Sometime during their argument Orlando threw some paint tubes and Sean bellowed on top of his lungs. Lan wanted to throttle him for being such a thick headed, lazy wanker and Sean called him a frigging pain in the arse. Orlando left before the break of dawn, slamming doors announcing halftime.

He gets back to his feet when he hears the first telltale busy noises coming from the streets. It’s still pretty early and there’s only a handful of people on the beach even though the waves are good. He doesn’t know them, hasn’t seen them before but there’s always someone to catch the best wave, usually someone appreciating the beauty of Lyall beach with rapid clicks of a camera. He’s been here for fourteen months and it’s always like this.

It’s quite a distance back to their house but he still slows down a little. For once he is in no hurry to get back; it has something to do with the possibility of Sean throwing things at him. Not that Sean is that good at aiming, especially not when pissed off. 

He walks closer to the ocean, his feet dragging a little in the shallow water, and he washes off the crust of sand on the rim of his trousers, only to have it coated again moments later. 

Sean yelling at him to stop nagging wouldn’t have been so bad if he hadn’t been so right. Because yes, lately Lan feels – he rolls up his trouser legs, drags his damp shirt over his head and wipes sweat from his brow with it. He stinks. He feels like he hasn’t showered in days, like his skin is buried underneath layers of sweat and dust and everydayness and can’t breathe properly. That’s how he feels. He could spend all day scratching himself like a mutt with scabies.

The beach gets a little fuller now, not just the odd eremite here and there. Two young women, their sandals dangling from the straps in their hands, cross his path and smile at him. They stick their heads together, giggle, and smile again. Only as they’ve already passed him he realizes that he has been flirted with. 

He smiles wryly at himself and kicks the next wave that licks his ankles. Real quick on the uptake, that’s him. It’s not about the girls. He usually is a bit thick when it comes to any kind of come on that’s not uttered in a dark rumbly voice, not reflected in light green eyes. It’s more the principle of the thing, him not getting it, not getting anything important, that annoys him.

He has stopped and squints at the sea while the spray does its best to bury his feet in the sand. He’s down almost to his ankles already and wriggles his toes, sea saws on his heels so he sinks even further, restless. 

This is beautiful. The beach in the morning, the undisturbed sand, the clean white foam of the spray, as if the God of the sea has just brushed his teeth or something. This is beautiful. The warm and steady sun every day and hanging out with Sean. Who is even lazier than him these days and hasn’t touched a brush in weeks. This is beautiful. 

If he just repeats it over and over to himself he’ll probably hear the truth in it again some time soon. 

When Orlando returns to the house Sean sits on the patio with his back against the wall and his knees drawn up. His lower arms rest on them, his hands are covered in red. Strokes of it run up his arms right to the rim of his rolled up shirt, and Orlando is a little surprised that there aren’t thick drops of red paint dripping from his fingertips, too. 

Orlando sits down next to him and untangles a plastic bag with some fresh groceries from his wrist. He uses his t-shirt to rub his feet free from the thickest layer of sand. 

Sean turns his head and watches him. There are bags under his eyes, under the left one is a wayward stroke of red as well. Automatically Orlando reaches out to touch it. His fingertips don’t wipe away the thick acrylic, just smudge it a bit, rub it deeper into sun tanned skin.

Sean’s fingers brush over Orlando’s, and entwine with them. Lan looks at them, joined and untidy, his own sweaty and sandy, Sean’s with nails chewed down to the quick not quite hidden by the thick layer of red paint. The sticky red glues their palms together.

“You look like a crazy axe murderer,” he says. 

“Or a midwife.”

Orlando pulls a face. “Eew.”

“’Cause homicide is so much tidier,” the painter replies dryly. Orlando bites his lower lip, a smile shyly hides in the corners of his mouth. What he really wants to do is straddle Sean’s thighs, hold him so tight that there’s no sticky paint needed to fuse them together.

“So, what did your hands give birth to then?” he murmurs and nudges Sean’s shoulder with his own. “Stupid metaphor.”

“A canvas oozing red. Made a mess out of the living room carpet. And the couch, too.”

“Is the result worth it?”

Sean raises their hands and brings them up to Orlando’s face, his thumb gently rubbing against Orlando’s chin, fingerprinting it. The paint tastes of nothing and too intense both when Orlando catches his thumb with his teeth, presses the tip of his tongue against it.

“Nah,” Sean says belatedly. “’tis a bunch of emo crap.”

His thumb brushes against Orlando’s lower lip when Lan releases it to speak. “Did you paint a couple of bleeding hearts? With barbed wire maybe?”

This time the painter’s hand lightly cuffs his chin in retaliation. “Cheeky,” he says and Orlando doesn’t deny it. “You want some eggs?” 

Lan’s belly rumbles and he nods. “And caffeine. Please.”

Sean gets up and vanishes into the house, taking the grocery bag with him. Orlando only follows when the smell of coffee reaches the patio. 

In the living room the aftermath of the painter’s creative venting awaits him. It looks like a crime scene, the carpet is ruined and not even an army of cushions could cover the stains on the sofa. It looks like Sean hasn’t bothered with brushes, hasn’t even bothered with paint tubes, but just opened large bottles of acrylics and splashed them around, only randomly hitting the large canvas in the process. 

Orlando doesn’t care, the only thing that’s annoying him sits in front of the easel opposite of the window. Red and more red is soaking into the large canvas and onto the floor, looks muddy and amateurish because the creating hands were too distracted to work properly, were too impatient and angry to give the first layers time to dry, give the creative mind opportunity to think and compose. 

The whiff of fresh strong coffee accompanies Sean’s return. He carries two mugs by their rims, long fingers holding the hot ceramic with careful tips. His eyes are on Lan as Orlando’s senses drown in the overwhelming taste of the hot drink even though he’s way too tired for that to work.

“So?” the painter prompts him.

“This,” Orlando says, takes another slurping sip out of his mug and nods towards the painting, “this is rubbish.”

Sean laughs and his shoulder bumps lightly against Orlando’s. “Told you so.”

They both know that Sean’s self-confident enough to enjoy the teasing. Still, and while it is the most basic of truths and it’s trivial really, right now Lan needs him to hear this, “I love everything you paint, yeah?”

“As long as I paint,” Sean responds equally quietly, almost too quietly for the question in it to get noticed. As if there was the possibility that Sean might not be Orlando’s painter, might not be Orlando’s some day.

Lan swallows around something ragged in his throat. 

“You’re a right idiot sometimes,” he grunts and cuffs Sean’s shoulder lightly because he needs to touch him somehow. His hand slides down Sean’s side and rest above his hip, still and steady. The urge to constantly fiddle and shift is gone as long as he feels the warmth of Sean’s body like this.

“Pot kettle,” Sean murmurs and turns toward him, wraps his free hand around the back of Orlando’s neck. 

Sean’s not the easiest person to live with. He’s never thoughtless or inconsiderate, he just honestly forgets shit just like Orlando does. Lan knows that. But the painter’s dawdling muddleheadedness is still the perfect opportunity to be mad at him when all Lan really wants to do is, yeah, scratch that itch and avoid being mad at himself. 

For pacing around in the living room without any purpose. For not being able to focus on anything for longer than two seconds. For waking up after tossing and turning, and staring up at the white ceiling, out of the window with the picture perfect panorama view and thinking, ‘Aw, not this again’. 

Sean’s features are the one thing he’ll never get tired of. Lan’s eyes follow the curve of Sean’s profile, down his forehead, down the strong nose and linger on thin lips. The laugh lines around them are still there even if not used right now, hiding under the scruffy beard. 

“If you wanna move on,” Sean continues evenly, eyes on the canvas, fingers curling in Lan’s neck. “Let’s book us a flight.”

Orlando knows perfectly well that Sean (for all his absentmindedness and ‘Huh? Wha’?’ attitude) can read him like an open book. He himself feels more than a little dyslexic sometimes. 

“No, I want –“ he starts. Stops. He wants Sean, but that’s a given. Even if once again he hasn’t got the words to properly express how much. Beyond that though? “There’s so many possibilities, countries to see, people to meet, y’know.”

“Yeah, I know,” Sean replies. 

“It’s just –“ Orlando tries and traces the outline of burgundy spiraling into crimson without touching the paint. “My head’s so full of ideas sometimes that it’s all a big jumbly mess. It feels like I’ve mixed meds, OD’ed on alternatives, yeah?”

“’And instead of getting high on them –“ Sean starts, understanding.

“- I end up vomiting onto your shoes,” Orlando finishes. 

“Well, deserved a kick in the arse, didn’t I.” 

Orlando hums noncommittally. Then he pokes the canvas with his naked toe just like he did it with the dead miniature shark he found on the beach last week. Sean shakes his head and chuckles. They stare at the picture a little longer but that doesn’t make it any better. Orlando gets tired of frowning at it. Actually he’s just plain beat, full stop.

Eventually he asks, “Weren’t you making eggs?”

“Shit,” Sean grunts, puts his mug down and hurries back into the kitchen. The smell of burned eggs and muttered curses drift into the room. 

Before the painter reappears with (a second set of) scrambled eggs and toast Orlando turns the canvas around, its naked back towards them now. Better. They eat on the couch, open mouthed because the eggs are too hot but they’re too hungry to wait, plates balanced on their thighs.

Afterwards, Lan says, “You know, you should really just exhibit the carpet. Or better the couch.”

Sean nibbles on the rest of his toast and glances at the upholstery. A big splotch of red adorns the grayish fabric right next to Orlando’s shoulder. “Too fond of it,” he then decides.

“Yeah,” Orlando agrees, “too many stains of other stuff on it, too.”

“You’re responsible for most of those,” Sean points out. “Should have the honor to name the piece, then.”

Orlando leans back against the comfortable cushions, rubs the little roundness of his freshly fed belly and yawns. “Even after what came of it in Auckland?”

Sean’s hand idly caresses the tat on the inside of Orlando’s arm and he’s smiling to himself when he answers, “Still dunno what the problem with innuendo was supposed to be. It was just a silly opening, wasn’t it?”

Orlando chuckles and strokes over the worn fabric of the couch contemplatively. “Right. So, maybe ’Shag me sofa’?” 

“Subtle,” Sean responds and cups Orlando’s knee in his palm. “Out of the series of ‘fuck me furniture’ I take it?”

Orlando just grins up at him and nods. 

Sean leans over and kisses him. 

He tastes of coffee and eggs, smells of cheap cigarette smoke and gesso just like Lan himself smells of stale sweat and the crusty sea. They end up sprawled over the couch, the little hairs on Sean’s legs tickle the insides of Lan’s own naked calves. Lan nuzzles the hand that cups his cheek as the painter kisses down his neck.

“Maybe I’ll do that, sell it,” Sean murmurs, distractedly focused, and follows the path that Orlando’s exposed jugular suggests. “Can always buy a new one.”

“I like this one just fine,” Orlando replies as he arches away from it a little, into Sean’s touch. 

“You’re salty,” Sean says in response and lightly bites Orlando’s collar bone.

“You’re a tease,” Lan grumbles, laughing quietly. He draws Sean closer yet, kisses his ear as he strokes down Sean’s back and his words are similar, his tone of voice has changed. “My tease.”

Sean stills, then he moulds perfectly against Orlando. “Yeah,” he agrees, his fingers ghost over the edge of Orlando’s collar bone. “Yeah.”

Orlando turns his face into the crook of Sean’s neck and closes his lashes. His eyes burn a little at first because he has been up for too long. Sean’s hand travels down his side, Sean’s lips trace his neck, his Adam’s apple, down his throat. Then he loses track of Sean’s motions as well as of his own. 

He keeps his eyes shut and drifts, just like his hands are, he is always awake enough to reassure himself that Sean’s close, hears him whispering against his ear, quiet things that he already knows (that he’s always known). Quiet uneven breaths just like his own when pants are pushed down and his hand wraps around them both, aligns them, strokes, falls still. Begins to caress again when Sean’s little affirmative sighs and thrusts into his fist wake him a little more.

Pleasure and contentment curl over and around him in waves, constant and constantly shifting. It makes it nearly impossible to mark the change between drifting and coming and slumbering. 

Later, he wakes and slowly blinks into the midday sun that comes in from the windows. The room’s warm, and he kicks off his sweats that have twisted around his knees. 

Sean’s body shields him from the a/c and with sleep numb fingers he traces the peaceful features without disturbing his lover’s slumber. He idly straightens the collar of the painter’s shirt and smoothens the messy fabric with gentle strokes. His fingers pull Sean’s cargo shorts up again, carefully tug him in, too.

Sean murmurs something unintelligible, wraps an arm around Lan’s waist and draws him closer. Orlando pushes his naked thigh between Sean’s and shifts a little until he gets growled at, then he stills and falls asleep once more.

The next time he wakes it’s because of a small puddle of his own drool that has soaked his cushion right under his cheek. A grumble crawls up his throat and he swallows, smacks his lips and turns his head away from the wet spot. Another grumble follows as he slowly realizes that he’s awake and blindly he reaches for Sean, his hand patting the sofa around himself sluggishly. Sean’s not there.

“Looking for the zapper?” The painter’s voice is full of amusement.

Lan answers with a third grumble. “’ time is it?” he murmurs and rubs drool from his cheek. 

“Fiveish,” answers Sean and Orlando shifts onto his side but doesn’t open his eyes. Things clatter in front of him, something rish-rashes against fingertips, the sound of wood on wood. 

“We could make casserole tonight. That chicken you bought?” Sean suggests. “Or go out. Either way, you should clean up first. Figure you stink.”

“You stink,” Orlando retaliates even though the smells of freshly showered skin and damp hair lingers in the air. Of apple scented shampoo.

“Cheers,” Sean responds. There’s wood against plastic, a low plopping sound like a can being opened with a brush’s handle, and the distinct smell of chemicals joins the apples. 

Tentatively Orlando opens his eyes after all and his vision focuses on Sean’s back as he’s facing his easel. He wears fresh clothes and most of the paint has been scrubbed off his arms. Orlando strains a little to look around him. Only when he sees the virgin canvas he falls back into the cushions.

“What happened to the rubbish one?” he asks and scratches an itch on his naked belly.

“Got rid of it.” When Sean looks over his shoulder, as if he’s sensing that Orlando’s watching him now, he half grins. “I take out the trash, see?”

He weighs a large brush in his hand, flicks it between fingers as his eyes search the canvas for a starting point, only ever visible for him. 

Orlando looks out of the window and the sun’s low enough to paint the trees in the garden a glowing shade of green-gold. The scenery is upside down, he lies a bit twisted on the sofa. Not just because of that. Today, the afternoon light somewhat equals dawn for him and Lan yawns and feels rested.

“Are you in the mood for Thai for lunch or whatever?” he asks. “’cause I kinda want to roll around in that noodles stuff from last week.”

“Again, hope you clean up before. Otherwise you can eat those on your own.”

Orlando looks down at himself and yeah, he should shower. He’s still naked and paint rub-offs, sand and sweat (his and Sean’s) cover his body. But getting clean would require getting up. For now he just shifts a little, gets comfortable again.

Occasionally Sean mumbles something to himself, sometimes comments on the colour and consistency of the acrylics, sometimes completely random things. Orlando listens and watches him paint.

The artist’s thoughts take shape on the canvas and Orlando figures this doesn’t need to be put into words. The painting creates its own private language that only Sean speaks and that Orlando always recognizes as true and ’yes, that exactly’.

Sean’s posture is relaxed as his brush touches the canvas, and every once in a while he stops, surveys the progress and hums, satisfied. He glances over his shoulder and smiles a little absentmindedly at Orlando. 

“Let’s just stay for a while longer, yeah?” Lan says then. “Here, y’know.”

It’s a decision that he knows is his to make and that’s been the reason for all his shiftiness lately. Thing is, right now it is really just as easy as that. Orlando maybe should feel a little stupid for all the drama his edginess has caused but Sean doesn’t seem to mind, so he doesn’t either. He’s fine with it in this moment and that’s what matters. 

“Sure,” Sean agrees easily. He turns around, flicks his wrist and the liquid paint on it sprays a little, miniature droplets sprinkling Orlando’s chest. “Should maybe find a playgroup for you, though. Keep you occupied.”

Lan grins and flops onto his back. “But who’d make you get a move on if I was in a special needs class? I’d need to hire a dominatrix or something.”

“True,” Sean agrees once again. He scratches the back of his head with the handle of his brush as he looks at Orlando’s sprawled out naked form. “Suppose I prefer your methods of encouragement.”

“I live to serve the greater good,” Orlando drawls and stretches on the couch in rather obvious self advertising. “Art and all that kinda crap.” 

Neither of them cares too much for planning far ahead. There’s never any real need for it. The one thing that is important is decided anyhow, no matter how loud they occasionally may shout at one another. 

Lan pushes himself up into a sitting position, his naked feet avoiding a red splotch on the carpet. “I’mma take a shower. Can I talk you into washing my back?”

****

**2009, July**

“How ‘bout a vacation?” Sean suggests one afternoon around a cigarette.

Lan climbs out of the pool where Sidi has just beaten him in their version of waterball. “Man, awesome. You reckon you can talk my boss into giving me some weeks off?” 

The only work Lan has been doing for months is relieving the artist from pesky exhibition prep duties and the like. It makes sense that Sean laughs now and lets Lan drip water on him as the younger man leans over him. 

“Settled then. Where to?” 

The internet’s everyone’s friend and the same night they book two flights to South Africa as well as the first nights in a hotel in Johannesburg. 

“I’ll organize some books for you to read, let’s plan along the way, yeah?” Lan decides over breakfast and kinda go for overkill when he visits the library. 

“Do we still own passports? No idea where mine is,” Sean murmurs absentmindedly to himself as he sorts his oil pastels. But he finds his and Orlando’s in his box for spare brushes a couple of days later.

Everything set, Sean drops Sidi off at a friend’s house the evening before departure. But on the way back he gets himself into a car accident and breaks his wrist in two places. The ER wins out over the airport.

If, though, if they had caught their plane, if they had gone to Africa? It might very well have been like this:

 

We get upgraded to business class but it is still flying as far as you are concerned, so it doesn’t make much difference. You stay up during the night (not biting your nails but close) and let me steal your blanket as per usual. When I wake right on time for some early breakfast in the clouds over Jo’burg, you complain that you had to watch “17 again” on telly, and twice at that. I inhale my scrambled eggs with mushrooms and refrain from pointing out that business class means free choice in movies as well.

We hire ourselves a car in Nelspruit – a big Land Cruiser because you heartily object to my idea of motorbiking when there are wild animals around. I promise to defend your virtue against any lion in heat and have booked us on a safari in Kruger even before we have left the airport.

The pickup for our guided tour is at 5.30 and even though you have poured two cups of black coffee down my throat, I still sleepwalk onto the game drive truck. I snore underneath warm blankets against the morning cold while you stare into the misty twilight and two buffalos stare back. Until midday, I have traded half of my packed lunch in for cuss words in Afrikaans from our tour guide. You help yourself to the rest and contentedly munch a green apple while the truck parks near a leopard spotting. Everyone is properly excited because they think they saw its tail somewhere. 

We decide to stay in a camp within the park for a while, mostly because I dig the name of the round little buildings you can rent in Skukuza: “rondavells”, with a long A – and you repeat the word so often that I end up clasping a hand over your mouth. I drive our Cruiser most of the times because I am aces at spotting game (I find the butt of a rhino and the carcass of a hyena that first day after all). While I drive us into traffic jams (awesome window-to-window chats to be had there), you squint into the greens of the bush and the endless sky, feel horizons broadening in your mind.

Sometimes we park on one of the small dirt roads that aren’t that frequented. You lean your sketchpad against the steering wheel and copy tree after tree after tree onto the milky white paper. I push my seat back and sip from the Amarula I bought in the most touristy shop I could find. I watch your hand swiftly and steadily recreating unique shapes while the shades around us don’t seem to move. Neither do the hippos in the mudhole nearby. Propping my feet onto the dashboard I retell the plot of the “Lion King”, uncut version.

We drift apart and back together in Cape Town. You spend afternoons in the Michaelis Collection and the National Gallery while I impatiently wait for the fickle weather to cooperate so I can go paragliding from Table Mountain. You befriend a guard in one of the Castle exhibitions who has hardly any teeth but shares your liking for little details. I buy random stuff I like to call ‘souvenirs’, the nicest of them being a second hand golfclub while neither of us knows how to play. We pick out some wines and cheese and crackers for a wine tasting and that ends in a huge piss up in our hotel room, compromising several members of the hotel staff on the way (there might have been loud singing in the elevators).

When the weather improves we drive down the peninsula and Jesus Christ, the sight of the waves nearly kills me. You steer us through the National Park and when I open the door on a deserted parking lot at the Cape of Good Hope, I have to lean back against the car - the strong smell of the sea is just overwhelming. The spray is shooting up into the air where the rough breakers crash against rougher stone; the cold salty air rips me open, like a camera lens opening for over exposure. The sea leaves me soso hungry and I know without turning my head that your eyes aren’t on the uncompromisingly blue waves or the torn clouds. They are on me. The backseat of the rented car is as private as it gets but I don’t care and you don’t stop me. In its confined space, enveloped by such width, I try to inhale you, try to consume you whole – needy mouth on every bit of hastily exposed skin. Pacifying that raging euphoria inside of me.

You are in love with Stellenbosch the moment we drive into the little town. I tease you by calling it ‘quaint’ but fall in love myself (all over again) with the quiet happiness that towns such as this always trigger in you. I can’t really name the reason for that, I guess it is little things that you notice, like hammocks on verandas and student priced coffees. I just take my cues from you, sitting in a café, your face turned into the sun. You smoke and seem quite pleased with yourself and life in general. I buy us croissants to go with the cheap coffee.

In the De Hoop Nature Reserve I take a walk in the thick morning mist and get thoroughly lost. There is no mobile reception and even the sun is covered in a thick padding of grey. Like ghosts, creatures sprung from the invisible ground, antelopes appear out of nowhere. The shivers that run down my spine aren’t just caused by the cold - in the iciest moments of the morning, just after the sun’s fully up, I feel utterly alone in the world.

The Caroo Caves thrill you and me equally. It’s just that you have to stuff your hands deep into the pockets of your slacks to not touch the hideously beautiful stalactites while I long to hear rock concerts in the echoing emptiness. Anything to fill the eerie silence.

We get stuck in Port Elizabeth for a while because I manage to get hold of a surf board and practically sleep on the beach. You get sick and tired of the big city eventually. When pleasantly high on some decent pot (God, so good) and the feeling of your mouth and hands, I can’t say no to anything you suggest, that you murmur against my salty sweaty shivering body. We leave in the morning; I can still feel the buzz of the night before just underneath my skin.

Funnily enough, the one time we get thoroughly lost is in the streets of East London. Familiar sounding yet unknown roads confuse the hell out of both of us and we feel slightly disorientated even after we’ve left the city again.

Storm awaits us on the Wild Coast. The wind whips across the beaches and curls and bucks around our house in Port Grosvenor. We share body heat against the African winter, huddled up close. Under the blankets it is your breathing alone that I hear. My fingers draw pictures of the waves onto your skin, visible to no one but us. I shuffle closest to you after I have switched off the light, listen to the darkness and the wind and press the tip of my nose against your unmoving shoulder. 

When it begins to rain again in Durban I start to read for you (that Dick Francis whodunit that sets in South Africa) and for once you don’t point out the villain after 30 pages into the book. It’s a good one and as per usual we have our favourite characters; of course mine is Evan, the eccentric director that films elephant shit – 

 

“’ – Haagner had warned Evan not to go too far from the shelter while filming as he presented an open invitation for a hungry lion. But Evan naturally believed that he wouldn’t meet one and he didn’t.’ – Okay, well, that is slightly dense, I give you that,” Orlando comments dryly. When he glances up from the pages of his book, Sean looks at him with slightly unfocussed eyes. 

“Hey there, you,” Lan says and puts the novel down onto the white sheets. 

With a voice, raspy from lack of use, Sean replies, “You ‘n’ yer stories.”

It’s not a complaint and a hint of a smile ghosts over the artist’s pale lips. The hospital bed seems too big and it makes Lan want to crawl in with him to fill the empty space.

“You weren’t protesting earlier,” he points out and lightly taps the book cover.

Sean’s eyes flicker across the room. The machinery that works in almost silence and the vast space of the white walls, cheap seaside prints and a plain clock looking forlorn on them. The unfamiliar sight of too white linen covering his body and on the bedside table the leftovers from the hospital canteen that Lan hasn’t finished yet. The drawn curtains the colour of whale vomit; or pale blue, however you wanna call it. 

Belatedly he reacts to Lan’s words and half counters, half asks, “That’s ‘cause I were napping, weren’t I?”

“Mhm,” Lan agrees. Napping indeed. For two days after the OP on his broken arm. The hospital chair screeches a little as he pulls it closer to Sean’s bed.

Sean grunts and shifts. Slowly he raises his arm which is wrapped in protective white delta cast. “How did that happen?” He flexes his arm as much as he can and sluggishly licks his lips, eyes searching Orlando’s. “Did an elephant sit on it?”

“We’re not actually in Africa, y’know,” Lan says and Sean lets his arm fall back onto the mattress. The artist doesn’t make further inquiries – it doesn’t seem all that important to him where precisely he is or how he got here exactly.

“We still got time to catch that flight?” Sean asks and rubs his eyes with the back of his good hand. “I wanna pat a leopard.”

Orlando grins and shakes his head. “Only if there’s been two days delay at the airport.”

Two days. 48 hours that Sean has struggled with the aftermath of the anesthesia. 48 hours that Lan has been awake. He hasn’t alternatively looked at the clock on the wall and Sean’s unmoving features. He hasn’t paced around the room and told him to stop being a bastard. He hasn’t waited, waited and silently pleaded Sean to please, please wake up now.

No. He has been reading whodunits and leafed through travel brochures. He described pictures and made up stories to fit them, studied maps and planned routes for them to follow. He read and talked to Sean while he drank the watery hospital tea, painted out imaginary scenarios and waited, waited.

“You look tired,” Sean states. A big yawn threatens to swallow Lan’s face. Sean arches a brow suggestively. 

“Forget it, I’m not gonna climb into that narrow cot of yours,” Orlando replies to the unspoken proposition, voice even sounding a little scandalized like he actually means it. 

Sean chuckles and the rough softness to it almost sounds like him again. After a moment (Lan’s eyes drift closed during that time) he pushes himself up to a half sitting position and asks hopefully, “Can you find out when I can get out of here?” 

“Sure,” Orlando nods and can feel the smile tugging at his lips at the barely hidden urgency in Sean’s voice. If there’s one thing he dislikes more than flying then it’s hospitals.

As Orlando gets up Sean twists a little and reaches out to covers Lan’s hand on the bed with his own good one, squeezing it. The younger man looks down at him and an inquisitive frown knits his brows together; Sean only lets go as it softens away and then he nods once. Lan lightly knocks his knuckles against the plaster cast. 

“Now, let’s see if I can commandeer a wheelchair to smuggle you out the back door or something.”

****

**1996**

It’s raining thick knitting needles. Already. Resignedly Orlando looks out from under the flimsy shelter the bus stop provides. He kicks the huge holdall at his feet, thinks, “This is stupid” and “Why would anyone live here by choice?”

A shiver runs through him when that last thought sinks in. Sort of like when your clothes are finally soaked through and the clammy and cold feeling reaches your skin, determined to make you feel miserable. This is no way to think about your home country. He zips his jacket up and hides his face up to his nose in its collar, tries closing his eyes and picturing warm beaches instead of this pissy autumn, wants to listen to rolling waves and sea gulls instead of screeching motors and tires that run through puddles.

It doesn’t really work and he knows perfectly well why. He knows already that he’s been a bit of an idiot to ever think otherwise.

It has started out as a somewhat reasonable albeit completely random idea, really. Sean was painting outside, nothing proper, just playing with colours and trying this and that, the artist’s version of twiddling his thumbs. And Orlando looked out of the tiny window of the caravan and thought, “So, I could say hi to my mom, couldn’t I?” 

Orlando opens his eyes again and it has grown a bit darker yet but the rain still hasn’t stopped and the fucking transfer bus still hasn’t come. He glances at the large clock on the opposite side of the road, right above the neon sign of the store, but hardly any time has passed. That’s the thing, isn’t it? Time doesn’t pass in the right pace, and he already has the feeling of everything here being a little too narrow, too. A bit too tight, like the clothes you’ve worn last summer that stretch over your shoulders now, are too short around the ankles.

He sniffles (bloody colds, he’s forgotten that he had them here for the better part of the year) but doesn’t blame the weather or the country. Not really. Because it’s not England that is suddenly wrong. It’s not as if he’s turned his back to it for a while and it changed for the worse or anything. Not even here it is raining 24/7, they have spring here too, and sunshine and smiles and laughter and friends, family, the whole lot.

‘Canterbury City Centre’ the sign on the bus reads in big letters as if to make up for the little light. He hauls his luggage inside, pays, sits down on one of the free places. 

It started out as a dull ache on the plane, when he woke up and turned to his right to tell Sean about the weird dream he’d had. Just that sitting right next to him was some businessman, sweating into his cheap blue shirt. 

He tells himself that it’s just the weird chicken curry he had on the plane, tells himself that this is not a lie and to stop mulling it over. This is his damn home, for fuck’s sake. He’s gonna enjoy catching up with his mom and his old mates and that’s that. 

He shuffles in his seat until he can lean his head against the window, the low vibration of the moving vehicle like a buzz against his temple; thick raindrops outside.

***

They’d been dancing around this for a few weeks. ‘This’ being the possibility of a change of scenery. And ‘dancing’ being Sean looking at him funnily sometimes as if he had asked him a question and Orlando didn’t provide an answer. Lan enquired about it in any language he knew – “What’s up, man?” over breakfast, or the kind of silent enquiries where he touched Sean and was happy about all the small reactions even if they didn’t really explain anything. 

But Sean didn’t say a thing. Not because he wouldn’t, Orlando knows that, but sometimes yeah, he turns mute and deaf and illiterate and honestly can’t say what is on his mind.

Sean was dawdling about and whatnot and couldn’t make up his mind if staying on St. Vincent really wasn’t an option any longer, or where he wanted to go. And meanwhile, Lan decided that it was a good idea to fly to England and pay his mom a visit, right?

Well, apparently, wrong. But he didn’t know that then.

***

It’s still dark outside when he stirs in his sleep. Pictures of his dream become blurry as he slowly registers parts of his surroundings, the softness of the sheets, the button of his pillow that is pressing against his cheek. Impulsively, he wants to reach out and blindly hold on to something of Sean’s – his hand, the rim of his shirt, his hipbone.

He blinks against the darkness before he moves otherwise, his fingers clutch the bedspread close to his body. Distantly he remembers this feeling of waking up alone. During the winter nights in Prague that was, while the wind ghosted dramatically around the house and he had cold feet all the time.

Now, he lies awake and tells himself that there is only one reason why, back then, he was able to go back to sleep: He didn’t know what he was missing right that very moment.

On St. Vincent, Orlando thinks and curls into himself on his mattress, Sean has probably kicked off the covers again already because the caravan stores heat like an oven. Right now he sleeps and lies sprawled on his back and his skin, golden and still warm from today’s sunlight, begs to be touched. 

Lan feels his cock hardening a bit as the image settles in his mind, and he feels a little sick. 

Right now, no one is there to caress, to find comfort in all those affirmative little touches.

***

It’s not that Orlando can’t live without Sean. Of course he can. He is perfectly capable of waking up and getting out of bed without his soft little snores in the background. He can go to work without having to figure out how much of his paycheck can be invested in paint and canvases and he can shop and eat without bothering with Sean’s weird so-called grocery lists that mostly feature stuff like socks and peanuts.

He could surf, sleep, dance, laugh, he could be without Sean. 

But what’s the point to it?

Thing is, Orlando strolls through the streets of London and is bored, he hangs out with some of his old mates and he is restless, does chores for his mom and is irritated. Frankly? He steers head on towards misery with each day that is passing and that’s just plain stupid.

He curses their caravan for not having a phone line. Then he calls Sean in the pub and rants at him about the fucked up weather, about his freak of a mother, about how much England as a whole just sucks big time. 

And he hears Sean’s grunts that are confused and slightly unsettled. It takes him a moment to realize how he must sound – how very much like a moody, bad tempered stranger.

A stranger. Oh God.

His voice dies in the middle of a sentence about the shitty railway system. 

“So, uhm,” Orlando starts again, feeling as awkward as a fourteen year old as he stands in the middle of his childhood room, “how are you anyway?”

Sean is silent for a moment. There’s a gaping hole inside of Lan that threatens to run full with loneliness. Then the artist says slowly, “Alright, I guess. – You know the feeling when,” he rubs his chin, searching for words, “when you wanted to do something but forgot what it was? But it still lingers in the back of your mind, itching there?”

“What got you so distracted?” Lan asks gratefully and cradles the phone closer to his ear.

“Dunno,” Sean replies, habitually. “I haven’t been painting anything, not anything worth writing home about anyway.”

“Man, I spent my time complaining about the weather,” Orlando says. “Beat that.”

Sean’s chuckle is soft in Orlando’s ear. He sips of whatever he’s drinking and Lan can hear him take a breath, before he starts, “I was trying to figure some stuff out. Do some planning, things like that.” There’s a short pause but it’s bridged with Sean’s not really annoyed huff. “But you know how I am with anything more difficult than tying my shoes.”

“Rubbish,” Orlando says automatically, sitting down on his bed. And because he knows that this isn’t enough to get a reaction out of Sean, he asks, “What were you planning?”

The other man takes another mouthful of his drink and Orlando can practically see him shrug before he responds, “Like, what to do with all my canvases and all the crap. Had the brilliant idea of just burning down the caravan, get rid of everything real quick.”

Orlando objects, equally amused and scandalized, “You can’t torch the trailer!” 

“Home of too many fond memories?” Sean asks and they both know that despite the irony in his voice he’s not really joking. “Don’t worry, I’d take polaroids for you before.”

“Not because of that,” Lan shakes his head, the stone wall rough against the back of his head. “It’s illegal, you’d have to go to prison and they got shitty visiting hours.”

“Well,” Sean concurs. “See where my planning gets me?”

There is that question in his voice again – the one beyond the obviously rhetorical one he’s actually asking. This tentativeness in his voice has been matched by Lan’s own idle reticence so far – Sean doesn’t even know what he’s asking for and Orlando? He’s been too much of a self involved pillock to help him reword it. Instead he went off to England and look where that’s gotten him.

“I got an idea,” Orlando says now because he is so done with all this crap.

“Hm?” Sean responds.

“You could just store your stuff in Callie’s boat house. It’d be safe and dry there, and Cal can forward it once we, well, we decided where to stay next.”

“Yeah –“ Sean says slowly, and he’s not just agreeing to the storage suggestion, “that’s… yeah, alright.”

“I’m full of terrific ideas,” Orlando hears the little bit of bravado in his self-praise alright. He willfully ignores it. This is Sean for heaven’s sakes, Lan knows there is no need for it, he really does. So, he adds, “But don’t pack away the umbrella, yeah? ‘Cause I kinda need you to bring that to me as soon as you can manage, yeah?”

Sean says, “We don’t own an umbrella.” 

‘We’, he said. Nothing has ever sounded so right.

“Don’t really care,” Orlando replies quietly. And in almost a whisper he adds, “I don’t even know what I’m doing here.” Because he’s been an idiot and that it took him so long to realize that makes him an even bigger idiot. 

It’s so pathetic that it should be embarrassing, but all he feels is relief when on the other end of the line (on the other end of the world) Sean chuckles softly, understanding and so much more than just sympathetic.

“I reckon”, Sean says and clears his throat, something thick in his voice. Orlando hears the distant chattering of pub patrons in the background. “I reckon you’re visiting your mom.”

It’s redundant, this whole reply, and so is Orlando’s reaction (“Well, she’s a freak.”). But Lan doesn’t care, draws his feet onto his bed that still seems too narrow for him and gratefully listens to Sean telling him meaningless little anecdotes about how Luca got himself into a wrestling match with a fat American tourist.

***

So, it has been enormously stupid of him to not realize it right from the start. This here is all wrong; not because of the rain, the lack of waves or the growling homeless man in front of the chippy who tried to bite him just now. It’s just not enough for him. Not anymore.

***

He enters his mom’s flat late in the afternoon and hears her puttering about in the kitchen. He sneaks past the door but knocks his head against the cross beam in the hallway that has grown too low for him over the past years. He takes a quick shower and retreats into his former room that is now a hybrid of office and shoe cupboard until his mother has left the flat.

Glancing out the window he’s not really surprised that it’s still raining and that the harshly coloured uniforms of the blokes from rubbish collection don’t fit against the grey sky.

On the kitchen table next to the butter he finds a postcard that is addressed to him. It’s from one of the stacks in Luca’s pub, he can tell because of the slightly bleached out colours and the frayed edges. Showing one of St. Vincent’s beaches, a skilled hand individualized the motive: There’s a tiny shark, a crappy boat, sea gulls fighting in the air. And a small figure is running towards the water, arms raised and flailing, while a second one is captured just before kicking a ball into the first’s direction.

Lan looks at the picturesque scene for a long moment – it’s a little piece of art, gestures and body languages are perfectly captured. It deserves his attention and it has nothing to do with him maybe being a tiny bit worried about what might be written on the backside.

Eventually he turns the card around; in the familiar neat hand there’s written: 

“My flight arrives at Heathrow on the 29th, 7.20 p.m. I haven’t booked anything else yet, you didn’t say where you wanted to go. Pick me up at the airport? – Sean”

Lan says ‘duh’ into the empty kitchen, then he decides he needs travel brochures and almost leaves the house in his boxers.

***

Some people are born to be by themselves and are happy with it. They go through life completely independent and you’d call them egocentric and kind of socially retarded, if you didn’t know better.

Some people are only happy when they are in a crowd, are always socializing, always bonding, and you’d call them unsteady, and attention whores, if you didn’t know better.

Some people are, like, destined to be with someone. They have this one person that replaces “I” with “we” in their vocabulary. You could call that unhealthy codependence – but Lan knows better.

***

He stares at the information display high up on the airport’s wall and it hasn’t changed since he last looked a few moments ago. Still the same gate, still the same time. Automatically he glances down at his wrists and for the nth time recalls that he doesn’t wear a watch (doesn’t even own one).

He’s waiting, and he’s not good at it. He has strolled past a few coffee shops and almost got himself a cup twice (just because that’s what waiting people do). Fortunately, he remembered in time what caffeine does to him on regular occasions and that right now it’d probably cause his heart to explode. And he figures that the boutique owners of the posh Heathrow shopping mile wouldn’t appreciate the mess all over their display windows and besides, he still needs his heart for other purposes. 

He shakes his head and firmly tells himself to stop with the inner babble. He succeeds somewhat and starts chewing his fingernails instead. He slumps down on one of the benches with the winged doors in sight and stuffs his hands into the pockets of his jeans, fingers playing with a hotel card in the left. If his outstretched legs force people to take a detour that’s certainly not his problem.

This last week has probably been the strangest of his entire stay in the land of constant rain. He ran on borrowed fuel, Sean’s card providing the desperately needed canister that may just get him to the next petrol station. The drive there, however, has been an up and down over hills of impatient anticipation and through valleys of still unfulfilled longing. 

He hides his self deprecating smile behind his hand. There is a stewardess walking by and she answers to the amusement in his eyes and winks at him. His gaze follows her and her little trolley case – a life neatly folded and economically packed – and his and Sean’s mess of holdalls, boxes, plastic bags and suitcases seems oh-so-different and yet similar.

The winged door is pushed open and even though the first person appearing is not Sean, Lan jumps to his feet nevertheless. He knows that the artist may very well be the last passenger to receive his luggage (or just forget how many items he checked in, more like), so he wills himself to be patient. 

Patient. Exactly like this last week when all he wanted to do was to borrow money to meet Sean half way, or paddle across the ocean on his surfboard or do something equally dense just because he sucks at being serene and at being –

There he is.

Sean carries his holdall and struggles with his suitcase in the door before he manages to drag it through. He looks exactly like Orlando imagined him to, hair a bit mussed up, clothes as crinkly as they can get; a little tired and weary but ultimately relaxed and happy to be safely back on solid ground. Lan knows the feeling.

Sean’s smiling in his direction and has already put down his bag and raised his arm by way of greeting when Orlando notices that he has been standing here like he was frozen to the spot. A grin takes over his face and he feels almost dizzy from it. Then, with quick strides, he cuts the distance between them, doesn’t knock people over that are in his way (really) and maybe he was planning on taking Sean’s luggage for him or something equally polite and civilized. 

Things go a little differently though. He wraps both of his arms around Sean and elicits a small surprised sound from the other man when this isn’t enough for him – he holds on, pushes himself off the floor and wraps his legs around Sean’s waist as well. And then he’s clinging to him like poison ivy, or a baby ape with serious abandonment issues, like a complete crazy person. But Sean is here and goddamn, Lan has craved this so bad that every bit of him not fortunate enough to be touching Sean right now is aching with jealousy.

Strong arms come around his sides, hands settle on his back to steady him and Lan can feel the hot puff of relieved laughter seeping through his hoodie against which Sean’s face is smashed. The artist doesn’t object to him acting like a lunatic and his brain is too drunk with happiness to coordinate all the fleeting but so solidly good impressions – the softness of Sean’s hair, how he’s grown a little thinner and Orlando can feel it, that Sean holds on to him tighter than he really has to.

Orlando hears people chuckling and clucking as they have to squeeze their way past them in the already limited space of the waiting area. For all he cares, though, someone could make a statue out of them right here, right now; pour bronze over them and title them – 

“The painter and his demented monkey,” he murmurs into Sean’s hair.

The other man pulls back and sways a little under Orlando’s weight. Reluctantly, Lan sets himself back down again and he stands on his own two feet once more when Sean says, “Hello to you, too.”

The artist’s hands are on his hips (where they bloody belong when not holding a brush, and maybe even then, Orlando doesn’t mind smudges) and Lan leans his forehead against Sean’s, his arms resting on his shoulders.

“Man, I am psyched to see you,” Orlando replies and really has to reign himself in to not just lick the little laugh lines appearing around Sean’s eyes and the shy smile on his lips. With only a little jittery fingers he straightens the painter’s collar (a futile attempt) before he asks, “How was your flight?”

Instantly Sean’s grin deepens, he squeezes Lan’s side once before he lets go and answers, “Desperately need a beer.”

“I’ll buy you one.” Picking up the holdall, Lan slings it over his shoulder and looks at Sean expectantly. He’s not disappointed, the answer is as prompt as it was predictable.

“You got money?” Sean asks, surprise as badly acted as usual.

“Funny,” Orlando plays along and nudges Sean’s shoulder to get him to move. The majority of the arrivals has apparently already streamed past them, but it’s still crowded enough. “I could buy you an entire brewery. Well, in Cambodia or something.”

“I’ll hold you to that,” Sean replies. 

They get slowed down in traffic, so to speak, because there is a horde of elderly ladies heading the same way. Apparently their legs are much shorter their shoes are not as made for walking as Orlando’s worn Vans and Sean’s sneakers. Patiently they wait in line to get out and Orlando looks at Sean’s profile again. He’s in no rush to get anywhere, not anymore. North Africa sounds cool, so does Russia, and New Zealand is said to have killer waves. But it’s not as though Lan really cares as long –

“You wanna know something?” he says conversationally and adjusts the strap of the bag on his shoulder. In front of them a grandma is trying to bulldoze through a group of tourists. “I think I’d go bonkers without you.”

Sean turns his head and for a moment he just looks at Lan with wide eyes. Then Orlando is pulled into a hug, with the bulky bag hanging from him and in the most inconvenient place of all. Sean might not climb him like a monkey but he holds him so tightly to his chest that it’s almost difficult to breathe. 

Lan lets him. He hugs back and decides to only let go again when – well, never actually.

****

**2009, April**

April is the month in which Jensen gets a dog. It is also the month in which he accidentally befriends way too many artsy people, finds his inner Dolly Parton and possibly has gay sex for the second time. And probably for the first time. But it really all starts with the dog.

His girlfriend got them a poodle to save their relationship. In retrospect, Jensen figures that he got away easy since some couples have babies to duct tape the cracked vase that contains their mutual attraction. Usually this doesn’t work and ends with even more divorce victims. So, when Danneel leaves, Jensen is probably lucky. He is also definitely the owner of a six month old white miniature poodle.

The poodle is called Rambo and this name is not only unfitting because the puppy has serious abandonment issues and is a total chicken but also because it is a girl dog. But Jensen is nothing if not responsible and reliable (which doesn’t equal boring, thank you) so he simply takes Rambo with him to work. Jeffrey Dean, his big mean asshole of a boss, falls right in love with her and while this makes Jensen question the order of the universe, it actually solves his dog sitting issues.

Unlike some of his friends Jensen actually has a job that doesn’t involve flipping ground meat or parking other people’s imported cars. Not that Jay seems all that unhappy with his hours at Burger King but that’s simply Jared for you. Jensen doesn’t get why the guy is getting high all the time, he’s a natural born happy camper without the weed as well.

Jensen works in Morgan’s Gallery, one of the most renowned places in town. And while he likes to wear ties that match his suits, shows up for work on time and has a bunch of other possibly very boring habits, his drug of choice is art. Art makes him feel like he’s stripped of his always neatly ironed clothes, of his carefully structured and planned life, without the panic attacks that chaos (and nudism) would cause in reality. So yeah, Jensen may be a bit in love with art.

His boss Jeffrey Dean is a logistical catastrophe and an antisocial bastard but he knows art. One of the things that he has hired Jensen for is the whole “dealings with the fucktards outside”. Which means that while his boss sits in his office all day and together with Rambo makes plans for world domination (or possibly another art catalogue, Jensen isn’t sure), it is Jensen who usually spends his days in the gallery and talks to buyers, art lovers and potential exhibitors. 

It’s twelve o’clock, and it is relatively quiet. Jensen is just contemplating whether he can talk Jeffrey Dean into going for walkies with Rambo (not as suicidal an idea as it might sound) when the glass door of the gallery opens.

A pair of screamingly bright blue Adidas track pants from the 1980s walk in. They come with an unshaved guy in his fifties whose hair looks like it has a personal feud with combs and brushes. He is chewing on a pretzel, bits of salt clinging to his scruffy strawberry blond beard, and he rubs sleep out of his eyes with the heel of his free hand. 

At once Jensen notices the telltale splatters of paint here and there on his white t-shirt. Okay, maybe Jensen noticed mostly because he is staring at the man and maybe he looks a little like that one time when Jay spilled banana milkshake all over the upholstery of his brand new Citroen C2. He pulls himself together, straightens his tie and walks over.

“Hello”, he says and smiles because his smile has the power to whitewash far more awkward situations. “Can I help you?”

“Sorry we’re late,” the other man says, as a form of greeting. 

‘We’? It echoes in Jensen’s mind. Jesus, not the majestic plural shit. Not again. Because even the average artist – for all the beauty he might create – is way too eccentric for Jensen’s taste.

Before he can inquire however, the gallery door is pulled open again and a second man comes in, a black dog tagging along. Jensen thinks he must be about his own age, casually dressed and good looking, normal. However, the second man’s eyes search and find the scruffy guy instantly and his smile doesn’t even falter when he turns towards him and says, “Remind me again why I had to play chauffeur? Bloody nuisance, parking.”

“Your fault that we’re late?” the bearded guy suggests.

“I didn’t forget to set the alarm clock,” the younger one retaliates.

Raising a buttery finger to rub his nose and hide a smile the other one mumbles, “Difference between forgetting it and turning it off.”

“And wasting an additional hour under the shower.” A grin spreads over the dark haired man’s features and it is a little more revealing than Jensen feels entirely comfortable with. 

“Wasn’t my idea either.” 

“Yeah, I know. I’m super.” 

The older man doesn’t object to that but merely shrugs. His companion obviously considers the argument won because he finally turns to Jensen. Who by now feels a little bit like an extra in a very weird experimental TV show.

“Sorry”, the younger guy says to him. “Couldn’t find a parking space and when I finally succeeded, it was like on the other side of town. Terribly sorry to have kept you waiting.”

“Not a problem,” Jensen says on auto pilot even though he has no idea who these people are. Then three things happen at once: He remembers that Jeffrey Dean had an appointment with an artist at noon; Jeffrey Dean remembers that he had an appointment with an artist at noon, he comes storming out of his office, he brings Rambo in his wake.

Kind of baffled Jensen watches how Rambo makes a bee line for the visitor’s black dog and starts flirting shamelessly by sticking her tiny butt in its face. Jensen would feel humiliated on his puppy’s behalf if he weren’t to busy being bewildered because of his boss’s reaction to the visitors.

“Good to finally meet you in person, Mr. Bean,” says Jeffrey Dean (who claimed that that too much human interaction makes him want to vomit) enthusiastically and holds out his hand. 

“Sean,” replies the scruffy one, wipes his greasy fingers on the front of his t-shirt and then shakes the offered hand. “Pleasure is all mine.”

Ah. Butter fingers is that guy. Jensen gets it now, doesn’t really need the heads up of praise now spilling from Jeffrey Dean’s lips while he is reluctant to let go the hand of ‘such a pleasure to… your Moroccan work especially… Can’t tell you how…’ Jensen zones out because he might be slow sometimes but now he got who the painter is. Visions of colorful glory twirl in front of his eyes even without his boss’s description.

“Would anyone like a cup of coffee?” he asks and after three nods he tries to discreetly detach Rambo from the painter’s dog. The poodle is not amused, the artist’s companion definitely is.

When Jensen returns with the coffee the small party has moved to Jeffrey Dean’s office, discussing the exhibition. The next quarter of an hour is mostly filled with Jen reminding Jeffrey Dean that they already scheduled opening night for late May and the dark haired guy reminding the painter that he needs to get his stuff transported here by then. 

When the younger one decides that he needs a cigarette Jensen gladly offers to accompany him and he can’t help but notice the slightly envious expression on the painter’s face as they leave the office. 

“Man, your boss is a bit intense, isn’t he?” the dark haired guy says as he follows Jensen through the backdoor.

“You should see him when he has to deal with kitsch and epigones,” replies Jensen dryly.

“I bet it’s epic,” laughs the other man. “Chubby porcelain angels make Sean cry as well.”

“My guess is they get thrown out of the window and it turns out they can’t fly?”

“It’s like you know him,” the other man says with mock amazement. “I’m Orlando by the way. And this is Sidi.” 

He gestures down at the black dog that has sat down a little too closely at its owner’s side and gives the half closed backdoor a wary glance. Just this moment, Rambo sticks out her tiny head and Jensen could swear there are little pink hearts in her eyes when she spots Sidi. Crap. Orlando starts laughing smoke through his nose as Jensen’s attempt of closing the door fails miserably and Rambo is in the back alley and all over Sidi once more within a second.

“Yeah,” Jensen says resignedly. “I’m Jensen and er, this is Rambo.”

Orlando offers Jensen a light all the while trying to not to stumble over the two dogs. “I think your poodle is bent,” he remarks with amusement.

“It’s a girl dog,” Jensen answers which makes this only remotely better. But all of a sudden Rambo runs off, her perfectly manicured claws clicking on the pavement as she disappears around the corner. Jensen hears a whooping sound in response and buries his face in his palm. 

A moment later, Jared is walking towards them, grinning like the crazy person he is, while Rambo tries to hump his right leg.

“And such a well mannered lady she is,” Orlando says with a smirk and Jensen gives him a long suffering glare.

“It’s not her fault. He smells of dog and carries beef jerky in his pants.”

Orlando snickers which makes him appear far younger than anything before and which obviously counts as a ‘hello, nice to meet you’ in Jared’s world. Jensen finds himself nearly suffocating when Jared wraps him in a bear hug and Jensen thinks (not for the first time) that the combined smell of hamburgers and weed is rather unbecoming.

“Jensen!” Jared shouts, nearly giving Jen a tinnitus. “Just the person I wanted to see! I missed you last weekend!”

“Excuse me?” Jensen says. It comes out as ‘Uz’e’ because his face is still mashed against Jared’s shoulder. He pushes Jared back and repeats, “Excuse me?”

“I moved! Moving vans, cardboard boxes. Bigass furniture. Fish tank.”

“You don’t own a fish tank,” Jensen points out.

Jared thinks about it for a second then he shrugs. “Whatever. Point is I moved and I gotta say that it’s disappointing that you didn’t show.”

Jensen pinches the bridge of his nose and is well aware of the fact that both Orlando as well as Jared are looking at him expectantly. Very slowly he says, “I was there. I even drove the van. The rest of your crew was too stoned to do it, remember?”

Jared blinks. Orlando arches an eyebrow.

“You made me drag around your pinball for half an hour while the guy with the cowboy hat – Chris something? – sang a song about clothes hangers and lonely button downs,” Jensen prompts him. “Later your dog fell asleep on my shoes.”

Realization dawns on Jared’s face and lights it up like a Christmas tree. “That was you? Thanks, man. You’re invited to the housewarming party. I was about to invite you anyway but just so I could out-vite you again for being a crappy friend. But as it turns out you’re not a crappy friend you remain invited.”

“I –“ Jensen says lamely. 

“You –?“ Jared prompts him. “Y’know you can jerk off to some Van Gogh painting any other weekend, dude. – He is the guy who chopped off his ear, right?” He turns his head and looks at Orlando for confirmation. 

Orlando merely shrugs and takes another drag from his cigarette. “No idea. I’m just an innocent bystander.”

“I like your shirt,” Jared decides. Jensen glances down at Orlando’s plain pale green t-shirt and shakes his head while Jared adds, “Wanna come to my housewarming party?”

“You can’t –“ Jensen starts. The sentence is supposed to end ‘invite people from my gallery, scar them for life and get me fired’. What he actually says is, “You can’t invite strangers and contemplate to out-vite your best friend, dude. And that’s not even a word.”

“Does that mean you’re coming? Jen?” Jared asks.

“Sure,” Jensen sighs. As if there really has been any other option. It’s not the first time that he gets peer-pressured into taking drugs and possibly singing karaoke in his briefs. 

“Awesome,” Jared beams and stuffs his hands into the pockets of his Burger King pants as if fearing that otherwise they might overdo it with exuberant gestures of joy. “It’s gonna be awesome. You’re gonna meet my other housemate, err, painter dude. If your need’s dire he can scribble you something to jerk off to.” He turns towards Orlando. “Invitation stands. Bring your own food, weed or alcohol. Whatever.”

Orlando crushes the butt of his cigarette underneath his heel. “Beer okay?”

“Awesome,” says Jared. “Gotta run, told my boss I was just gonna go to the can.”

Orlando watches Jared all but skip away and then looks down at Jensen’s dog that has returned to trying to get Sidi to lick her bum or something. “You keep weird company,” he remarks.

Jensen flips the remains of his cigarette into the back alley. “At least mine doesn’t dress like a 1980s porn star,” he mutters and only belatedly realizes that he has said that out loud. Way to be professional, go around insulting your next exhibitor’s style in front of his muse.

Orlando tilts his head and looks at him contemplatively for a second. Jensen can see his life flashing in front of his eyes right before Jeffrey Dean beheads him for losing the exhibition due to Jensen’s big mouth. Then a broad grin spreads all over Orlando’s face and he says, “Yeah, I have great taste, don’t I.”

“Is he gonna dress up for the opening?” Jensen asks tentatively but with a little smirk curling his lips involuntarily.

Orlando chuckles. “Something on your mind?”

“I’m just thinking that it’d be good if the main focus was on the artwork.”

“It will be, trust me,” Orlando replies with all the calm in the world. “We could all show up naked and no one would notice.”

“That’s some vote of confidence,” Jensen says. He means to make it sound slightly sarcastic but something about Orlando’s poise is oddly persuasive. But then, Jensen figures he is more than averagely prone to becoming a cult member just because he likes his world all neat and orderly and problem free.

Orlando merely shrugs as if no answer is required and changes topics, “So, about that thing tomorrow, you’re gonna give me directions?”

Jensen blinks, a little confused – Party. Jared. Right. Thing is, with Jared’s parties you never know who ends up arrested and again there’s the image of Jeffrey Dean with an axe. 

“This party is bound to be disastrous,” he says by way of forewarning Orlando.

“Are you kidding?” replies the other man, walking through the door that Jensen holds open for him. “Clothes hanger songs and weed? It’s gonna be super.”

“As you said yourself, you obviously got great taste,” says Jensen dryly. “I’ll get you the address.”

Jeffrey Dean and Bean aren’t in the office any more when Jensen drops in to fetch his BlackBerry. Instead he finds them as well as Orlando in the largest exhibition room in front of a series of smaller impressionistic paintings that Jensen knows are Jeffrey Dean’s favorites. 

Jeffrey Dean’s enthusiasm is filling the better half of the room, making it a little stuffy, and Jensen isn’t sure whether the artist shares the sentiment. His eyes are fixed on the canvas even as Jeffrey Dean talks but he has his hands stuffed in his pockets and he doesn’t really show all that much of a reaction. Orlando however seems interested and unperturbed and Jensen gets the distinct impression that he takes his cues from the painter, and relaxes a little.

“So, I’ll get Jensen to contact you,” Jeffrey Dean concludes the tour, “once your paintings arrived.”

“Yeah, good,” the painter nods and turns to Orlando. “Lunch?”

“I’m craving a Whopper,” Orlando replies with feeling.

Sean turns towards Jeffrey Dean again, smile in place, “Wanna join us?”

Jensen bites back a grin at the thought of his boss with a Burger King crown on his head.

“Er, no, I gotta –“ says Jeffrey Dean and shows the telltale signs of retreating into the fort of his office again. “But let’s have proper lunch some time next week, alright?”

“Alright,” the painter echoes and amusement crinkles his eyes as Jeffrey Dean shakes his hand and excuses himself.

It’s up to Jensen now to show them out. At the door Orlando ushers his dog out and says with a grin over his shoulder, “See you tomorrow, Jensen. I’mma bring along some proper beer for you, yeah?”

“And by that you mean ‘steal from me’, yeah?” Sean specifies, imitating Orlando’s inflection.

“I’d never!” Orlando protests unconvincingly. His hand on the small of the painter’s back subtly guides him left on the pavement, probably to where their car is parked.

Jensen watches them walk down the road, talking animatedly. Or Orlando is and in response Sean’s shoulders tremble with laughter. 

Something inside of Jensen shifts at that sigh, sort of like a curtain that is drawn and reveals an empty space. He knows that somewhere there Danneel has lived for a while but when he looks at that big hole it isn’t really shaped like her. His eyes follow Sean and Orlando until they disappear around a corner. Then he rubs his chest absentmindedly.

Rambo traipses up next to him and whines quietly. Jensen’s not sure heartache works the same way for poodles as it does for humans. Possibly Rambo just wants to tell him that she needs to pee. 

When Jensen arrives at Jared’s house the party is already full on. Which isn’t all that surprising since it took Jensen a while to find a dogsitter for Rambo (he wouldn’t just take anyone, and oddly the majority of his neighbors found it weird to be cross-questioned on their view on Kibbles vs. Pedigree).

The place Jared moved into – scratch that, the place Jensen moved Jared into – is a mixture of a beach hut and a gingerbread house. All in all, Jensen is using the term ‘house’ very loosely here. It’s crawling with people and they mostly fit both the category of criminal minded potheads and fairy tale beauties in Jensen’s eyes, with the odd normal person squeezed in between. Ever helpful, there are actual card board signs on the walls that point the way towards “BEER!” and Jensen follows them faithfully. 

Before he gets to the alcohol however, he discusses Obama’s foreign policy with a very stoned dude on the front porch and has a yelling-over-loud-music-how-are-ya conversation with someone from back in college in the hallway. He also finds himself jumped by some girl he has never met before (he’s sure). She vehemently disagrees and tells him in detail about how they both got drunk together in college, hooked up and how is he doing anyway? Jensen isn’t sure what the right response to that is – and he politely turns down her offer to give him a reminder of how the sex went and compliments her on her shoes. This is not his normal reaction to straightforward women, really. 

He finds Jay in the living room after he finally got himself a beer in the crowded kitchen. He is slouched on what Jensen roughly guesses was a couch about half a century ago.

“Jenny!” Jared hollers, jumps up and squeezes Jensen’s head in a one-arm-hug-gone-wrong. “Party’s starting as of now!”

For all of Jay’s questionable qualities – and there are many, many of them, Jensen has a list – his presence never fails to make Jensen feel right at home. Welcome. At ease. Maybe that has something to do with Jay’s gorilla arms cutting off the blood circulation to his head but Jensen doesn’t dwell on that.

“Just in time to hear Lan’s story about the shark,” Jared announces, voice a little raised and carrying easily over the music, before he pulls ragdoll-Jensen back onto the ancient couch between himself and Chris. Jensen frowns in confusion but he knows that slightly glazed story time expression on his friend’s face and following the direction of Jay’s gaze he finds Orlando grinning at them from an armchair.

“So, shark bite?” Chris asks, absentmindedly raising his bottle at Jensen in hello. “Show us your battle scars.”

Orlando and takes another sip from his beer. “Wasn’t me. Sean’s got the scar – I was the white knight in that story, yeah?”

Jensen watches Jared think about that for a moment, then he feels his friend shrugging. “Alright. How big is it?”

Orlando stretches out his leg and draws a line up his naked shin, from ankle to close under the rim of his cargo shorts, finger following an invisible and ragged pattern.

“Wow,” Jared says in serious awe. Jensen sees a smile tugging on Chris’s lips.

“How come the shark didn’t chop the leg off?” Jensen asks, more interested in the details than Jay. He is pretty sure that Orlando’s painter doesn’t have a wooden leg.

“If you’d asked Sean he’d tell you that he poked it in the eye with one of his brushes,” Orlando replies with all the seriousness he can muster.

“Huh,” Chris comments.

“Really?” Jay asks with enthusiastic astonishment.

“Really?” Jensen says dryly at the same time.

“Well, to say that there was no shark and that he just kicked in our glass fronted living room door, that’d be dull, wouldn’t it?” Orlando says and Jared nods in serious agreement. Then between the two of them they color out the shark story with the eagerness and the skill of a drunk five year old with neon crayons. 

“And hey, look,” Jared says and draws Jensen in once again. His beer sticky finger pokes Jensen’s chin and Jen swats it away. “See that scar there?”

Orlando dutifully looks at Jensen’s chin and makes him feel altogether like an exhibit at Morgan’s gallery.

“Jenny got that when he defended me against a bunch of crazed Jehovah’s witnesses,” Jared announces, almost a little chocked up about it as if it were true.

“Wait, what?” says Jensen with incredulity then he shakes his head and goes with it. “Yeah, I did. They wanted him to lay off the weed. He cried. It was horrible.”

Jay looks at him like he isn’t 100% sure whether this didn’t really happen and Chris nods thoughtfully. “I can see that.”

“Say what you want about religious fanatics but they are passionate about what they do,” Orlando agrees.

“This is why you’re my best friend,” Jay decides and Jensen has no idea what ‘this’ is exactly – saving Jay from sobering up or talking shit in general – but it feels nice either way. 

However, then Jared and Orlando move on and agree that the fucking giant scar on Orlando’s spine comes from surgically removing batwings from his back. Before they can start acting out pre-surgery flight simulations from the coffee table, Jensen abandons Chris and flees the scene in search of more beer. He’s pretty certain that while Jay is in his default mode of slightly high, Orlando is utterly sober as of yet, but there you are, some people’s tolerance of crazy is definitely higher than Jensen’s.

Close to the source he downs a couple of drinks right there in the kitchen and finds himself sort-of-dancing for a while with a tall brunette although the rubbing of boobs against his chest – while being not at all unpleasant – is probably not really dancing, he figures.

When he feels slightly lightheaded and close to levitating he decides it’s time to say see ya later to the brunette and hello night air.

The backyard is exactly how one would picture the backyard of a house inhabited by a constantly stoned sculptor/Burger King waiter, a Brad Paisley wannabe and a painter that Jensen still isn’t sure really exists. The lawn – if you still can call a few scattered patches of grass thus – is brownish and mismatching chairs and even another old couch decorate it, all arranged around a grill, surf boards precariously stacked on top probably to save space.

Jensen sits down on the couch, takes a large sip from his beer and while its bitterness curls in his mouth he leans his head back. This is pretty nice. The thump thumping of music that definitely got picked by Jared comes in waves from the half open veranda door and about where Jensen’s sitting it meets with the determined chirping of crickets that have to hide somewhere in the bushes. The air is warm and feels on his skin as the alcohol is feeling in his belly, lazy-content, slightly wistful and really rather pleasant.

“Have you seen a tiny guy with a cowboy hat?”

Jensen drags his eyes away from the stars and focuses his gaze on the figure of a man standing in semi darkness.

“Uhm, no? Not lately,” Jensen says slowly and with bemusement watches the guy glancing over his shoulder before he slumps down next to Jensen on the couch.

“Good,” the guy says and lights a cigarette.

“So, you’re not looking for him, the tiny cowboy?” Jensen asks. 

“As much as I’m looking for STDs,” the guy replies and shakes his head for good measures. “Nah, dude, Chris is just a fuckhead who likes blaming other people for his own inability to hang on to his pot.”

“And you had nothing to do with said substance’s disappearance,” Jensen clarifies, playing along.

The guy squints at him and then a smirk thins his lips. “I didn’t say that. This house is becoming the beautiful example of how communism can work, everything belongs to everyone.”

“So you live here?” Even before the blond guy can do more than nod once, it dawns on Jensen and he says, “Ah, you’re the painter dude!”

“I suppose that’s me,” the guy says, grinning.

Jensen realizes that it’s maybe not all that polite to call people ‘painter dude’ while pointing at them. He scratches the back of his neck and says, “Jay’s got the memory of a sieve and I swear sometimes he doesn’t even remember his own name – sorry.”

“Chad,” the other guy says and holds out his hand. It takes Jensen a moment to connect the dots (he should not have had that many beers, at least not before eating something). 

“Jensen,” he says a little belatedly and shakes the offered hand. “Nice to meet you.”

“Yeah, you say that now,” chuckles Chad. “Wait until I stole stuff from you. – Jensen, Wait a second, you’re Jenny?” Chad throws his head back and laughs and only after a moment he’s fit enough to elaborate, “The way Jared was talking about you I thought you were some double D supermodel he wanted to bone.”

“Aside from the double D part,” Jensen says dryly and silently vows to kick Jared in the groin next time he sees him. “That is all true.”

Chad laughs again and pats Jensen’s shoulder without taking his hand off of it afterwards. For a moment Jensen ponders whether he’s always this tactile or just when he’s had a few (in which case, let’s just say that Jensen can relate).

“You work in an art gallery, right?” Chad says. “What’s that like?”

“It doesn’t get my laid as often as one might think,” Jensen jokes and his lips curl against the glass of his beer bottle when Chad grins again.

“Tell me about it, I wouldn’t have become a fucking artist if I had known that none of the orgy stories were true,” he commiserates.

Jensen arches an eyebrow. “So, the ‘let me paint you nude’ thing doesn’t actually work?”

Chad squints at him and for a second Jensen isn’t whether he’s being judged or maybe mentally undressed. He should stop drinking some time in the near future.

“Don’t know,” Chad says then, serious. “It’s not like I’d paint people.”

The rather condescending tone of voice with which he says it makes the question whether he finds still lives acceptable more than obsolete, so Jensen opts for something different.

“Didn’t say anything about painting.”

For a second he thinks Chad’s eyes are focused on his lips with their kind of strange intensity, then the other man is back on the topic. With a half hearted grin he shrugs and scratches his shoulder.

“Tell me, do you believe anyone gets inspired to do art when there’s naked people in the room?”

Jensen holds Chad’s intense gaze for a second or two, then he, too, shrugs and peels the label off his beer bottle.

“You tell me. I’m just the guy that makes up texts for the catalogues in order to sell stuff.”

Chad makes a dismissive gesture, the cigarette in his hand completely forgotten. “I get it, you’re the establishment from 9 to 5. Fine. I wanna know what you think, though.”

“What I think?” Jensen chuckles puts his empty bottle of beer onto the ground next to the sofa. “I think that sometimes artists choose to do abstracts simply because they can’t paint for shit.”

“Yeah,” Chad agrees easily but without elaborating. His hand has slipped from Jensen’s shoulder when he put his beer down and now it’s resting on the ratty backrest of the sofa. Jensen slowly leans back and regards Chad, whose gaze is too intimate for a conversation in the middle of a party, for someone who he’s just met. Still, he finds that he wants to answer his question anyway – the bit before was merely scratching the surface really. He opens his mouth and closes it again, because yeah, there definitely is something he has to say, wants to say, but he can’t find the words and he’s a perfectionist. This is about art, after all, serious business.

Chad doesn’t seem to mind the wait. Some of the tension in his body has vanished again and he has relaxed against the cushions, but his eyes are still on Jensen, waiting.

Jensen is about to start with what he thinks will lead to an answer eventually when there is noise from the living room and it suddenly bursts out into the backyard like a volcano erupting. Jensen’s head snaps around and he is not really surprised to see Jared being in the middle of it all.

He has his arm slung around Orlando’s shoulder and both of them seem rather unsteady on their feet, which might explain the stumbling out of the door. Jared’s face lights up when he spots Jensen and Chad on the couch and he hollers,

“Jen! Roomie! No moping in the backyard! Karaoke time!”

He waves the mic in his hand enthusiastically and judging by the grin on Orlando’s face, Jared has already tortured the people inside with his shocking lack of musicality. Without his steadying presence, Jared is even less sure on his feet, but that has never stopped him. He strides over to the couch and just grabs Jensen’s collar, hauling him upright.

He smells of beer and various fruity drinks and looks at Jensen a little cross eyed. 

“I need you to be the Dolly to my Kenny, Jenny.” 

Jensen’s eyes helplessly dart to Orlando, who shrugs and says, “He’s your friend.”

“Double D knockers after all,” Chad says when Jensen’s pleading gaze reaches him, and he doesn’t seem all that fazed by the idea of a Parton/Rogers mutilation. Still, he gets up as well and pats Jensen on the back. “I’ll have some tequila waiting for you afterwards.”

“Fine,” Jensen says to Jared and quickly ducks before Jared kisses him, like he is known to do. Sort of like his misbehaved giant dogs. Jensen lets himself be dragged back into the house and the grin on Orlando’s face makes him think that Orlando and Jay could be soul mates. Then he remembers Sean and that this position is probably booked for life, so he settles for evil twins from hell.

He sees Chad disappearing into the kitchen just as Jared shoves the second mic into his chest and someone hands him a shotglass. 

The first of many.

Seriously.

The reason for why Jensen doesn’t drink much is his brain. Not that it tells him to stay sober or anything. Quite the contrary, as soon as he’s at a party it makes greedy grabby hands and hollers ‘Booze!!’ a lot. But the effects alcohol has on Jensen’s brain aren’t all that awesome. First of all he usually has a headache from hell and when he wakes up after a night out he doesn’t want to open his eyes in anticipation of the ‘Ack! Pain!’ that is sure to follow. 

He also usually doesn’t want to open his eyes because of what situation he might find himself in. It is usually embarrassing as hell and once he ended up backstage on a Heavy Metal concert with ‘Rock my cock’ on his forehead, once in the middle of a wheat field with a buzz cut and his left shoe missing. 

Alcohol has a mind wiping effect on Jensen’s brain, like someone sloppily washed a blackboard with a soaked sponge. It doesn’t help that usually the answer to all his ‘how the hell did I end up here’ questions can be summed up with one word: Jared.

Jensen wakes and his head feels like the inside of a Jumbo jet turbine. He groans, raises his hand to shield his face from the light and ends up slapping himself. For an unspecified amount of time he just lies still and plays possum while the sounds of the outer world slowly penetrate his consciousness. Birds outside, distant humming of cars, clattering of china, snores. The snoring is loud enough to be irritating and he opens his eyes, a frown already on his brow.

Jared’s giant head is only inches away from his face on the pillow. That alone is horrifying enough but Jensen’s body also rushes awake and tells him that underneath the blanket he is completely and entirely naked. 

Naked! 

Jensen is naked in bed with Jared!

Jensen makes a yelling sound like a cat that is being run over by a truck. Sort of like “Aiaiai!” 

Jared’s eyes fly open and he responds with a disoriented and very surprised howl, jerks up and promptly falls out of the bed with a loud thud. 

Jensen yells again and sits up straight on the mattress.

“Dude! The fuck?” groans Jared from somewhere south of the bed.

“You’re in my bed! I’m naked!” Jensen points out, a little hysterically. “NAKED!” he adds, just in case Jared didn’t get it. He grabs the blanket, draws it up to his chest and feels dirty. He probably is if Jared is responsible for his nudity – Jared never washes and must leave dirty pawprints on his victims. 

“I’m naked,” Jensen says for a third time. “And you’re in –“ Then he realizes that he is not in his own bed. He comes to the natural conclusion: “You abducted me!”

“Who got abducted?” asks someone and the door gets pushed open. Jensen draws his blanket up to his chin and in his Jared-induced naked frenzy steels himself for the appearance of the evil alien scientist.

Instead, Chad comes in, a toothbrush in his mouth and a questioning look on his face. It makes his brow furrow and Jensen kind of wants to lick it for a moment before he remembers that he is in the middle of a freakout.

“Jared took me hostage, had his wicked way with me and then tried to drown me in his drool!” he explains.

“Dude!” complains Jared, as if that clarifies anything, and raises his head. His hair looks like a drowned cat. 

“He tried to drown you in his drool?” Chad says slowly, pulls the toothbrush out of his mouth and licks his lips free from the foam, “I’d probably have noticed if Jay had done any of that.”

“How?” demands Jensen.

Jared snickers.

Chad scratches his belly with his toothbrush-free hand. “For one thing, Jay is dressed. And I really think I’d have noticed if we’d had a threeway.”

“What? How? What?!” yelps Jensen.

Jared howls with laughter.

Jensen tosses the nearest item (which turns out to be an alarm clock) in his general direction.

“Dude!” protests Jared for the third time and then adds for Chad’s sake, “Jen’s mind is a black hole after the second tequila.”

Jensen grabs something else to throw at him but it turns out to be a half empty bottle of lube. He reflexively hides it under his blanket and stares wide eyed at Chad. In a very doomed attempt to change the subject he stutters, “Nice boxers.” He nods at Chad’s only piece of clothing. “I got a pair just like those.” They really look exactly like Jensen’s boxers…

“Yeah,” says Chad slowly and does that squinting again.

“Oh,” says Jensen, realization knocking on his door persistently until he has to let it in. “So, we had gay sex and then you stole my underwear?”

On the floor, Jared is sobbing with laughter. Apparently he doesn’t mind so much that Jensen thinks sex with Chad vaguely okay but screamed like a girl at the thought of getting it on with him.

“Jay,” says Chad, “are you down with Chris eating the remains of your pizza? Because when I walked past the kitchen just now I think I saw him –“

Jared howls like a rabid wolfhound and is out the door in .2 seconds, hollering Chris’s name and some obscenities. Chad closes the door behind him.

“This works like a charm every time. Fascinating,” he says and pushes his toothbrush back into his mouth. “Yes ‘n’ no, by the way.”

“Huh?”

“Yes, sex. No, stealing – only borrowing,” mumbles Chad around the toothbrush. Then he sucks together the foamy saliva and spits it into the pot of an already sorry looking house plant. It’s kind of disgusting. Jensen still wants to lick Chad’s minty fresh mouth. Although –

“My ass doesn’t hurt,” Jensen points out reasonably. Or as reasonable as you can be about the state of your ass anyway. “There’s no way we could have had sex.”

Chad does that looking at Jensen and arching his eyebrow thing again. Then he pointedly stares at the area where Jensen is hiding his junk (and the lube) under the blanket.

“Ooh,” whispers Jensen. He doesn’t really know why he is keeping his voice down for that realization; maybe so his dick doesn’t notice and gets wrong ideas. Carefully, Jensen sneaks a look underneath the blanket. Hmpf. Too late. Apparently his dick votes for a repetition of the whole ‘hello, Chad’s ass’ experience. He looks up at Chad again. “I need to go.”

“If you need some minutes to panic in private,” Chad replies, “I can go and make us breakfast in the meantime.”

“I’m not panicking,” protests Jensen. “I need to pick up my dog. And just fyi, I need way more than a couple of minutes for a full on panic attack.” He scrambles under the blanket and gets hold of his jeans that lie all bunched up on the floor. “So, I’m gay and nobody bothered to tell me. Awesome,” he mutters to himself as he tries to disentangle the Gordian knot that are his trousers.

“There’s no need to freak out, y’know,” Chad supplies, amusement and fondness on his face (not that Jensen is looking at his face. He is not.) “You were pretty great.”

“I was?” Jensen quirks up and then groans, “Oh God.” His blush could probably heat a small Midwestern town. At least he’s got pants on now. He starts searching for his t-shirt under the bed.

“Yeah, you were,” says Chad, plucks Jensen’s shirt off the second plant in the room and holds it out to him. “Well, except for the time when you called me Rambo. Which, man, no.”

‘I need to find my shoes,’ Jensen thinks frantically as he pulls his shirt over his head.

“I need to lick your chest,” he says out loud and, “I mean – shoes!”

“You need to lick my shoes?” Chad is grinning broadly and Jensen wants to punch him. Or kiss him senseless. Or punch him and then kiss him senseless.

“I need to go now,” Jensen says with all the composedness he can manage, “and freak out somewhere that is far, far away from here. Nice to meet you, thanks for the sex and uh, everything.”

Jensen is not sure what the guy-on-guy hook up etiquette for the morning after is. Especially since he can’t really remember the night before. Besides, Jensen’s still alcohol soaked system feels a little green and he is pretty sure that Chad wouldn’t appreciate being puked on. So, seriously, Jensen is just being charming and considerate when he blinks at Chad and opens and closes his mouth like a fish on land.

“Can I call you?” asks Chad. There is something tiny and quiet and hopeful in his voice that makes Jensen reign in his skittish nerves.

“I actually don’t remember whether I own a phone,” he says. “This is all very confusing.”

“I could write you a postcard if that’s better,” suggests Chad. 

“A postcard,” echoes Jensen. “I think I own a letterbox.”

He finds his boots and awkwardly scratches the back of his neck with one hand while even more awkwardly raising his other as goodbye. Chad grins and turns to tend to his house plant that suspiciously looks like marihuana. 

Jensen successfully tiptoes past the battlefields of the ground floor. However, just when he’s out the door a black SUV halts in front of it. Out climb Sean and an obviously still slightly hung over Orlando. The artist again is dressed in clothes of questionable style but he looks freshly showered, well rested and just the littlest bit amused when he glances back and forth between Orlando and Jensen. 

“Morning, man. You seen my bike?” Orlando asks, walking towards Jensen. He wears large 70s style sunglasses and his voice is way more gravelly than yesterday.

“Backyard?” Jensen guesses, even though he has no idea what Orlando is talking about. All of this feels a bit like ‘Twilight Zone’.

“Thanks, man,” the other man replies anyway with a sleepy version of his brilliant smile and saunters off. “Saturday,” he calls without turning around again, “don’t forget.”

“Saturday?” Jensen looks questioningly at Sean who is leaning against the hood of his car.

“Lan invited you lot to ours for barbecue,” the artist supplies helpfully and the corner of his mouth twitches. He lights himself a cigarette and exhales the first puff of smoke. “At least he reckons he did.”

Jensen is a bit glad that he isn’t the only one with a memory problem. His brain points out that Orlando somehow found his way home again while Jensen – he shoves a sack over his brain and beats it with a baseball bat until it’s silent.

“Yeah, barbecue” he repeats, belatedly as well as noncommittally, “he might have done that.”

Behind the house a motorbike starts to purr and Sean pushes himself away from his car when a moment later the bike appears around the corner. 

“Hope you know how to ’cause I really don’t,” the artist mumbles around his cigarette as he leans in through the window and conjures a helmet. He throws it to Orlando and the younger man puts it on, slightly cumbersome, while Sean starts the car once more.

“Dig the hair,” Orlando calls to him over the noise of his bike and laughs when Jensen self consciously pats his head. He watches Orlando tail Sean’s SUV for a second before he overtakes it in a maneuver that would’ve made Evel Knievel sick to his stomach. 

Jensen stands in the driveway and wonders whether he’s really just been tricked into catering duty. Then he goes to pick up his poodle and put on some underwear. Not necessarily in that order. His jeans are damn scratchy.

Curiously that big freak out that he penciled in to take up the rest of the weekend? Fails to happen. 

He still doesn’t remember shit about that night. But what he does recall is that he so very definitely wanted to kiss the smirk right of Chad’s mouth the morning after. The fact that he still thinks about it and finds it hot even though he knows about his own morning breath, that is way scarier than the whole gay asssex aspect of events.

Two days into the new week, on a rather beautiful Tuesday morning, Jensen finds a card in the mail. It shows a kitten that is holding a gun to a duckling’s head. 

Bemused, he stares at the picture for a while before he remembers that he could a. close the door of his fridge or he’ll freeze his dick off (boxers aren’t really all that isolating against the cold), b. tell Rambo to stop licking his toes and c. read the card. 

“I have this awesome idea involving you taking me out for dinner,” the card says. “Call me so I can explain the details. - Chad. P.S. Do you want your underwear back?””

Jensen figures that the curious fluttering sensation in his stomach is the sober equivalent to his almost freakout in Chad’s bedroom (and proof that he is in desperate need of breakfast) and decides that he prefers the non-alcoholic version by far. He grabs a bottle of orange juice and a grin forms on his lips as he kicks the fridge’s door shut. Then he lets his poodle out into the garden before he calls up Chad.

**1997**

Sean recognises Orlando’s smile, the shape of his eyes, not a single wrinkle he would miss if there were any. Long before he realises that he isn’t asleep anymore. Orlando’s leaning over him, a little too close for Sean to look at every part of his face at the same time, to take him in whole.

Sean raises his arm to touch more of him; the shirt he is wearing (Lan’s) is a bit too tight and pinches. The loss of focus makes him blink repeatedly when Orlando leans down and kisses him right above his lips, close-mouthed and soft. 

***

“What do you think we’ll be doing ten years from now?”

“You’ll own a place called ‘Lan’s donkey farm’.”

“Neat.”

“Yeah. You’ll have about a hundred donkeys and know them all intimately.”

“Of course I will! Manolo and Paolo get terribly cross when I mix them up.”

“Southern American donkeys? But your farm will be in Australia.”

“Ooops, my bad.”

“No one’ll call you Lan though. To people you’ll just be ‘that donkey bloke’.”

“Hey, don’t donkeys try to eat everything? The stable is off limits for painting then, you can’t work in there.”

“Huh?”

“Where will you paint, Sean?”

***

When Sean steps out of the safety of their rented flat’s kitchen, out onto the balcony, he is almost blinded by the light. Like every morning he squints at the sun and the vast brightness of the sky before he surrenders.

With the filter of his sunglasses the world is just this other kind of slightly unreal. Still, his eyes soak up the sight of the whitewashed walls, the colourful towels hung out to dry, the flawed tarmac, the perfect curves of the unique doors on the other side of the road while he feels the sun reddening his neck.

***

The directions written onto the back of Sean’s hand are cryptic at best. Orlando’s handwriting is catastrophic, it’s hot and his skin is sweaty; the ink ran. He starts walking and tries to remember where he came from (and mostly fails).

Eventually, he locates the place with the fountain. Orlando blends in with the crowd of young American tourists he befriended in the meantime. He spots Sean from far away, waves and hollers, “Oi, over here!”

Sean suggests ice cream and Orlando agrees, his hand on Sean’s shoulder. 

“Apparently, I’m going out tonight,” he announces. “Oh, how was your museum?” 

***

Sean places a glass of lemonade onto the newspaper. It’s taking up all the space on the table.

“That could hide the perfect job offer, man,” Orlando scolds mildly, lifts the glass and glances at the wet circle it left on the ‘help wanted’ section. Then he leans back, his thigh pressed against Sean’s as he tilts his face into the sun, eyes closed. 

Sean watches him bathe in the light and thinks, This? Priceless. He feels clever, until he remembers it being the catchphrase in a Master Card commercial.

Orlando squints at him, smiles. “What are you laughing at?” 

***

“I feel like a bull in a china shop,” Orlando murmurs and Sean can see him burying his hands in his pockets. The space is cramped, dented cartons (colours fading) forming high crooked towers everywhere, an artificial Moloch. Sean takes out the list he wrote and turns towards the shop owner who glowers at him. Methodically the man works through Sean’s catalog of supplies; in the end there’s not a thing missing on the counter. 

When the doorbell jingles behind them, Orlando says, “Like a kid in a candy store, you are.” He tries to sound much older than 20.

***

Apparently, he trapped himself. 

The linen sticks to his feet as he gets up from his knees. Futilely, he searches for a path through the wet paint. It’s Hansel’s and Gretel’s breadcrumbs, paint cans strewn over the huge canvas covering the living room floor.

He puts down the can of red, lights a fag. The smoke clouds his vision, stings in his eyes. The forced loss of focus allows him to partition what’s already there. This kind of cartography works as long as it takes for the artificial fog to lift. 

He crouches down on his heels again, waits, thinks.

***

“This is what it must be like, right?” 

As if to keep themselves company, Orlando’s words echo in the silence and the darkness of the starless night. When Sean shifts he feels the hard ground underneath the woolen blanket, and his arm brushes against Orlando’s. 

“Y’know,” Orlando says as if only this touch reminded him that they were having a conversation. “When you haven’t started to paint yet and just look at your canvas so, like, completely focused. I reckon it’s like this, like the blackness of the night when I don’t know whether I’m still awake or dreaming already.”

***

“Wanna know some fun facts about Carthage?” 

Sean glances at Orlando with his book on the floor, finds him looking so gleeful that he is completely helpless. 

“Shoot.”

“So, they were major experts at torturing, right? For example, they’d slice you open while you were still alive,” he rolls onto his back and prods his naked stomach. “Then they’d take a stick and roll up all your guts on it!”

Sean dips his brush into the mess of paint on his palette. “Like spaghetti carbonara?”

Orlando barks out a laugh and rolls back onto his stomach. “I love you, man.”

***

Instinctively, Sean squeezes his eyes shut when the light is turned on. 

“Shit, sorry.” Orlando’s apologetic voice from across the room. “Didn’t know you were in here.”

Here, Sean is dimly aware, is the living room. Here is Orlando’s hammock which has been closer than the bed. 

“Can I?” Orlando whispers. Sean shifts to make room and the hammock rocks when he climbs in. His arms wrap around Orlando, he inhales deeply (Lan and a thousand smells of a night well spent). 

“Glad you’re back.”

“I’m like one of these homing pigeons; super sense of direction,” Orlando muses quietly.

“Mm-hm.”

***

The clock on the kitchen wall is not set to the right time. The light outside is still good (long, so long days they have here) and Sean is surprised to find that he’s been working for four hours straight. He wipes his hands on a dish towel, chequered but already smeared with charcoal and sweat. 

Orlando has fallen asleep on the balcony, where he has dragged his beach towel into last patch of sun. Sean crouches down close to the open door and reaches for Orlando’s hand, amazed that he can be so still, quietly content, patient for hours.

***

“The Tunisians,” Sean says conversationally, “believe that when you plant an olive tree on a grave you’re granted a wish.”

“Get out,” Orlando snorts and carefully puts down the honey melon he’s been holding (more cautious since that time he nearly got squashed by a pumpkin). 

“That bakery bloke told me.” Sean points at the nougat and the salesman nods obligingly.

Orlando pays and asks, “You remember he was drunk the last ten times we went there?” 

Sean shrugs, breaks off a piece of nougat, soft between his fingers. “You remember saying it didn’t matter whether a story were true?”

***

“Honestly, art expert my arse, as if that bloke had even the slightest clue – he _loves_ your work and then just bam, he doesn’t anymore? Right. Like that hadn’t everything to do with me coming in –. As if _anything_ could ever make your stuff anything less than brilliant! What a bigoted idiot. Is that the right word? Bigoted?”

“Yeah.”

“He’ll so be calling first thing tomorrow and beg you to come back. Serves him right that you went elsewhere. I like that new place better anyway. Man, those giant walls, absolutely perfect.”

“Yep.”

“Anyway, whatever. His loss, right?

“Yeah.”

***

“Rather depressing,” Sean says. 

Orlando stops poking a pile of rubble, looks at him questioningly over the rim of his ridiculously large shades.

Sean shrugs. That about sums up what he feels, surrounded by the ruins of a Roman bathing house, build on the burned ground of Carthage. “All this here. The Romans annihilated their entire culture, then forced their own upon them after.”

“You’re just still nauseated because of that hilarious bus ride. But man, it was _such_ a bargain!”

Sean chuckles, gets up and brushes sand from the bottom of his shorts. “C’mon, let’s find us some postcards.”

***

He is aware of the up and down of the museum guard’s eyes, the eyebrow that desperately wants to rise but is held back by manners. He’s just a visitor here, so what if the well dressed man notices the spots of paint (and other things) on his clothing. He doesn’t meet the guard’s eyes, mostly because he wants to look at art more than stare someone down to prove to himself that he can (sometimes he is glad about this sort of disapproval, that kind that is merely directed at his appearance). 

He walks on to the next exhibit.

***

“So, what do you reckon we’ll be doing ten years from now?” Sean asks and buries his toes deeper in the sand.

A frown is knitting Orlando’s brows together, Sean knows that without having to look up. 

“Colonising Mars or something,” Orlando responds, his eyes trained on Sean. A smile tugs on Sean’s lips; he can definitely see it, Orlando in a space suit instead of his washed out cargos, bouncing over red soil and searching for Mars’s hidden oceans.

“Honestly,” Orlando interrupts his thoughts, “I don’t care, as long as, y’know.” His hand closes over Sean’s knee, stays there.

***

Theoretically, Sean knows what a proper dinner meal should be like. If he remembers it correctly, one has to pay close attention so all courses match and set the table properly, including linen napkins.

What they call dinner is a combination of defrosted frozen food and plastic wrappings with treats from some market. If Orlando’s feeling spiffy he even uses the mismatching china that came with the flat. Everything finds a place on the large kitchen table, between Sean’s brushes and paint tubes and sketches, and Orlando props his feet onto the spare chair and talks with a full mouth.

***

“You need to turn both legs inside out.”

Sean struggles with the pair of jeans Orlando threw at him, gets distracted as he tries to follow the conversation between Orlando and the Laundromat owner about coins, detergent, politics. 

“I took four years of French in school,” Sean says.

Orlando stuffs Sean’s jeans into the machine, uses his foot to convince them to stay inside.

“Yeah?”

“Compared to you though? And now Arabic, too? That’s rather neat.”

Orlando switches the machine on, hops onto it as it starts to rumble.

“Wanna learn how to say ‘Oi, there’s paint on my pants!’?”

***

“I’m not sure why I’m supposed to stay in here.” Sean tries to frown at Orlando who shakes his head when Sean attempts to sit up. “At least come in with me.” 

“Have you looked at the colour of your bathwater recently?” Orlando asks with amusement and remains seated on the toilet lid. Sean does and it is uninvitingly ochre. He looks down at his hands that are still covered in shades of yellow.

“Could help me get cleaned up,” he grumbles. “Would, if you liked me enough.”

Orlando laughs and turns on the radio as he leaves the bathroom.

***

Finally he is satisfied with the arrangement of the canvases in the gallery. He should’ve listened to Orlando much earlier. If Orlando (instead of chuntering about it non-stop) had been able to actually pinpoint what was off.

“Excuse me?” He turns to look at a woman whose elegant but simple white clothes offer a nice backdrop for the neat London accent.“Are these yours?” 

He nods as she takes his work as a business card. Her handshake is firm, she doesn’t try to find words for what she thinks about the paintings. 

Instead she asks, “Would you be interested in representation?”

***

Sean prefers getting the sand out of his ears before supper. So he leaves a trail of wet footsteps as he comes back into the kitchen, a towel around his waist. The air smells heavily of prawns, cheap oil and salt water, Orlando is humming to himself as he prepares supper.

He makes a little surprised sound when Sean backs him up against the wall, kisses him. He tastes of salt and oil and prawns and happily lets Sean nudge his thighs apart. His cargos saltwater-damp and dried sand clinging to him, his touch makes Sean’s hands quiver with want. 

***

“I thought you got lost in there,” Orlando says, amused, when Sean comes out of the store. 

“They have aircon.” 

Orlando laughs and instantly starts rifling through the grocery bag when Sean sits down next to him on the low brick wall. Sean’s eyes catch a glimpse of something –

“What’s that?”

There are random tribal patterns adorning Orlando’s calf, blue ball point lines snaking over suntanned skin. 

“Got bored, had a biro. You like it?”

Sean knows he’s staring, still can’t keep himself from licking his lips.

“So,” Orlando says, unscrewing the Coke, “I was thinking of getting another tat.”

***

Orlando wanted to be photographed with a falcon on his shoulder but forgot his camera. 

Plopping down on the whitewashed wall, he ignores the ocean view, the blue shutters, the colour splotches on the sills. “What now?”

Sean chews on a dried banana chip and thinks about it.

“Sidi Bou Said was an artist’s Mecca, early this century,” he offers. “Expressionists mostly. Came here, painted and bummed about.”

Another wave of people streams out of a bus, through the picturesque alleyways. With closed eyes Orlando seems calmer than he has been all day.

“Go on,” he prompts, so Sean does.

***

All Orlando has achieved in the last half hour is glue his fingertips together.

“That mug is unsalvageable,” Sean points out. Orlando holds up two shards of broken porcelain in silent condolement.

“I broke it, I can repair it,” he says stubbornly.

Sean takes one shard and inspects its jagged edge. “Is this thing a symbol? For you thinking you failed or need to fix something?”

“No!” Orlando laughs incredulously, shakes his head. “Don’t be silly, Sean. It’s a _mug_!”

Grinning, Sean carelessly tosses the shard out of the open balcony door. “We’ll just get you a new one then.” 

***

He reads the Daily Mirror, drinks P.G. Tips and listens to the one English radio station he can receive. 

He can’t for the hell of it figure out four across. Idly, he asks himself whether he’ll be one of those persons who desperately cling to their heritage, secretly thinking that nothing is like home.

When looking up from the crossword he can see a billboard ad for desert trips, tops of palm trees, the roofs of the Medina behind the other houses. 

The radio reception is best on the balcony. Given the constantly warm weather that’s nice enough, he reckons.

***

“You ambushed me,” Sean states, after; paint and sweat and come drying on his skin.

On the floor next to him Orlando snorts, “You were crawling around half naked and I was gone for five days.”

“Were you? Huh,” Sean teases.

“Vroom, vroom,” Orlando replies with amusement in imitation of the motorbike he borrowed for his trip. He sits up and the paint on his back shimmers in the afternoon light. He glances at the canvas beneath them. “Looks like we ruined this one.”

The paint is smudged, snow angels in Persian blue.

“Nah,” Sean muses. “It’ll do just fine.”

***

“The last months in Montpellier,” Sean says, “all I could draw was you.”

He isn’t even sure Orlando is still awake. Still, just then he needed to say it out loud (even if it feels like something from another life), an admission to himself.

Orlando shifts, turns on the light and looks at him. Sean squints against the relative brightness, adjusts but still feels before he sees Orlando’s hand on his chest. 

“Yeah, I know,” Orlando says unfazed, eyes trained on Sean’s chest. His fingers trace Sean’s collarbone and draw an invisible line across his ribs.

“Good,” Sean replies eventually.

***

Sean’s three favourite explanations for never getting anything done are these: 

A terrible recuperation time when it comes to paperwork-induced headaches. 

Laziness. 

His astounding lack of talent for understanding forms and charming officials.

Lan? He takes to it like a duck to water, same as to repairing motorcycles, embracing cultures or socialising. In his random stories he regularly turns himself into a pilot, a diplomat or a tightrope walker. Sean’s certain that Orlando could be all of it if he wanted to. But he is equally glad that this isn’t the case. 

He reckons it’s not terribly selfish of him.

***

When he comes home he finds Orlando in the living room. Barefooted he stands on the heavy wooden table which Sean has pushed against the wall to make room for his canvas.

“Are you reenacting Monty Python?” 

“Come up here,” Orlando suggests and shrugging, Sean does.

“Huh,” he grunts when he sees it. The whole painting, not just the barely dried section he has done last. After a while, he adds, “I reckon this one’s done.”

Wood creaks under Orlando’s feet as he turns to face Sean. “Reason to celebrate, right?” he says in his happy go lucky come-hither voice.

***

“Gorgeous day,” Sean says, deliberately chipper. He can almost hear his words echoing in souk’s narrow alleyway. 

“Ngh,” Orlando replies pitifully. 

“Maybe you should’ve gone to bed earlier,” Sean suggests sweetly. “Gone easier on the booze.”

“ _You_ didn’t even come home till dawn! Plus, you still smell like the floor of a pub!”

“But I’m not the one,” Sean replies, purposely too loud again, “with a hangover!”

“I hate this place,” Orlando mutters. “And you.”

“Don’t blame me,” Sean laughs. “It was your randomly pointing index finger that brought us here.”

Orlando growls, then approaches an herbs stand, looking hopeful.

*** 

“There’s 36 years I had to manage without you. How’d I do that?” 

“Poorly, I’m sure.”

“Granted. But think about it.”

“Why? Am I supposed to, like, channel your teenage self and walk around all mopey because I don’t have, what? Me?”

“First of all, if you’d channel me you’d be -”

“Properly glammed up.”

“Secondly, why do I get the feeling you’re taking the piss?”

“’Cause I am. You got me now, be happy about that. Besides, I hardly ever take soulful declarations of love seriously if they are prompted by fetching you a pair of socks. Just saying.”

***

In the morning, Sean wakes to grey clouds dominating the sky. He switches on every light on the way to the kitchen, to his first cuppa tea. He finds Orlando in the living room, still in his boxers. 

“What are you doing?” Sean asks, even though it’s obvious. Orlando has dissected travelling brochures and pinned A4 sized colourful randomness onto the largest wall. 

“Whatcha think?” Orlando grins at him, looking terribly accomplished.

“This one, this, and that one.” Sean points at a city at night, a beach, a rusty bus.

“In that order?” Orlando asks and reaches for Sean’s mug.

***

He wakes up and it’s the middle of the night that is as close to pitchblack as it gets here. The assembly of colours is as clear in his mind as if he’s painted it already. Different from some times when painting resembles feeling his way through a forest, blindfolded. 

He’s careful to not disturb Orlando when he gets up, wraps the thin bedcover around himself on the way to the living room.

He unrolls a virgin canvas on the floor but isn’t stupid; nothing good comes from painting without natural light. 

He’s patient though. Dawn will arrive soon enough.

****

**2017**

Imagine this:

Lan and Sean find themselves in Yorkshire again; Sean isn't sure how (but what else is new), and if he remembers asking, Lan of course comes up with utterly ridiculous explanations.

And it doesn't matter, not really anyway. What matters is is that Lan finds them a cottage to rent in a village that has a fireplace in the sitting room which faces the road and has good light in the afternoons. The kitchen has a connecting door with chipped blue paint that leads to the small stable. Lan says he wants to keep goats there and he insists to buy tea that doesn't come in satchels. There are three rooms upstairs, the stairway creaking with every step. Sean paints in the one in the back; the crowns of crooked apple trees just reaching the window sill. They sleep in the smallest one, and Lan rented out the third to a lodger. He is so quiet (or Sean is so preoccupied) that Sean only notices his presence after a month or so when Sean picks bits of tea from his tongue in the sitting room and Simon knocks against the frame of the door, politely asking whether he might watch the football on their telly here.

There is this day, it might be February, when Sean paints upstairs the morning. He hears Lan preparing something for tea in the kitchen, talking to the dog that follows him around every step. Then there is quiet again and Sean paints, then he takes the wet canvas and takes it with him downstairs. In the sitting room, he leans it against the armchair next to the fireplace and looks out the window, watches the old woman from next door making her way to the shop and back, and a group of professional holiday hikers (colourful jackets against the drizzle) marching past.

Simon knocks and the plushy upholstery of the other armchair swallows him. He switches the telly on and hugs a pillow to his chest, chews on his bottom lip as he watches a cooking show.

Lan brings the smell of wet dog and wood with him later, falls down on the couch next to Sean. He lightly pulls at the sleeve of the jumper Sean is wearing and arches his brow, because he keeps insisting that the jumper belongs to him even though he keeps complaining about the scratchiness of the wool. He props his feet on the coffee table and sliding down low enough for Sean to drop his arm around his shoulder. His hand comes to rest on Sean's thigh, and like the speckles of paint on Sean's own, the back of it is adorned with traces of mud and grass.

And Sean feels the weight of Lan's body against his, lets the happy chattering about pork pies and the sounds if occasional cars on the road and its potholes wash past him. He watches the afternoon light changing the colours on his unfinished canvas as something in the back of his mind suggests possibilities for the blank spaces as Lan's fingers draw idle patterns onto his trackies.

'Want to get married?' he asks. The question doesn't come as a surprise to him, it's more like a last stroke of the brush after which you can't imagine the painting without it anymore.

Lan doesn't shift against him, but Sean now feels Simon's gaze on him.

'Can't', Lan says. He has raised his thumb to his mouth, gnawing on its nail, most of his hand hidden by his oversized sweater. When the TV cook successfully parted egg yolk from white, Lan looks away from the telly and at Sean.

'It's quiz night at the pub tonight, isn't it?' he adds, his smile warm and easy and sure.

Sean nods, looks back at his painting, and the reflection of the window forms a kaleidoscope of patterns in the wet paint.

'Tomorrow morning, though', Lan says and rests his cheek on Sean's shoulder despite the scratchy wool. 'How about then?'

 

****

**Undated**

Lan’s favourite colour is green, always has been and that Sean’s eyes happen to be the greenest of green proves that clearly he, Lan, is clairvoyant. Sean’s favourite colour is – well, it’s not that easy. He has a lifelong love-affair with blue but strays from it frequently, and Lan fondly compares him to a pasha with his harem of beauties, seriously. Sean shrugs and says he is monogamous where it’s important, gets Lan a cup of tea and kisses his temple before he sits down and accidentally squashes a tube of aquamarine in the back pocket of his frayed jeans. 


	3. Artwork

Title: Doesn't paint in town - art  
by afra_schatz  
  


All drawings I made for this verse over the years.

  
  
Published at: 2017-04-14  
Revised at: 2017-04-14 11:40:46 -0400  
  


[](http://pics.livejournal.com/afra_schatz/pic/000033h3/)

 

[](http://pics.livejournal.com/afra_schatz/pic/00016d5b/)   


[](http://pics.livejournal.com/afra_schatz/pic/000190fd/)  


[](http://pics.livejournal.com/afra_schatz/pic/0001s2z5/)

[ ](http://pics.livejournal.com/afra_schatz/pic/0004qstw/)

Click for bigger!

[](http://pics.livejournal.com/afra_schatz/pic/0004qstw/)

  



End file.
